The Monsters in Her Mind
by Aldrian Kyrrith
Summary: Taylor Hebert and Yog-Sothoth: two sides of a coin. How long will it be before the human and the nightmare begin to merge? How long can Taylor fend off the abyss?
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: This story was originally inspired by Helnae's _Starry Eyes,_ intending to write a Lovecraft fusion with Worm that attempts to more openly emulate the aesthetics and themes of cosmic horror. I own neither Worm nor the Lovecraft Mythos.

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Prologue

When she was a child, Taylor Hebert dreamt terrible visions of a vast blackness, filled with countless monsters that defied the imagination. Sometimes they spoke to her, whispering and screaming and growling in a thousand tongues that had never before been heard by human ears, but which she could understand with crystal clarity. They swore oaths of fealty and built altars made of blood and bone, and they bled black ichor into the emptiness in which they dwelt.

And Taylor, a child who was not a child but something utterly other, walked amongst them. And she was pleased.

And every morning, the child would wake up in tears and run to her mother and explain just how horrible and utterly wrong those dreams were. She was afraid to fall asleep, knowing what horrors and wonders and impossible vistas awaited her. She was afraid to fall asleep, knowing as she did that there was something in that dream more terrible and fearsome than all the monsters and the giants and the impossibilities that filled that place, and that something was her. She was afraid to fall asleep, for every moment she closed her eyes, she feared that, in the coming morning, she would no longer be herself but something else entirely.

The dreams were a constant childhood companion, and they were especially vivid in the days before she became friends with Emma. The monsters who gathered around her, vast and terrible and so eager to please, were her only friends, and that made those dreams all the more horrible, for what kind of child can only make friends with the monsters?

But as we grow older, our childhood fantasies melt away, forgotten and lost somewhere in the dusty corners of our minds. So it went with Taylor, and over the many years that followed, she gradually forgot the monsters in her dreams, and she forgot the abyss that existed somewhere within and beyond herself. And deep within her subconscious, something vast and incomprehensible, something that had just been starting to stir from an eternal slumber, fell back into a more restful sleep.

Her life took a turn for the worst when her mother died and her best and only friend, Emma, abandoned and betrayed her. Every day became a struggle, as she endured the taunts and abuse of someone who she trusted. With no one left to turn to, she could only grit her teeth and endure.

And at night, those forgotten dreams of childhood began to return. The first came the night her mother died, and as she found herself more and more isolated, stripped of all trust and devoid of any real hope, those dreams became more frequent, and more alluring.

When she was a child, she hated them and she feared them and she wanted nothing at all to do with them. Now, she welcomed them. The thing that was both her and not her wandered the temples of flesh and ichor and it was pleased. It walked amongst the monsters innumerable, which gathered around her in rapt, terrified worship and it felt companionship.

And every morning, when Taylor woke up from one of those dreams, she found herself wishing that she could return to sleep. It was a strange existence, and anyone else would find it to be a nightmarish one, but for her, it seemed right. This was the world she belonged to, and it was here that she felt at home.

And all the while, that terrible consciousness that lurked in the dark twisted corners of that young girl's mind began once more to stir.

Taylor Hebert was stuck in a locker, and something else, something that was simultaneously Taylor and yet so much more than Taylor, awakened.

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L

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In more than thirty years as Winslow High's Head Janitor, Stephen Williams had thought he'd seen it all. Of Brockton Bay's three High Schools, Winslow was easily the least well funded. It had always tended to deal with the problem cases but, over the course of his career, as the city fell further into depression and the commercial sector dried up, things had only gotten worse. Winslow was now ruled by the gangs and everyone knew it: the principal, the teachers, the other students.

In all honesty, if he were given his choice on employment, Stephen would have preferred to work somewhere else. Somewhere less dangerous, somewhere where he could expect the facilities to remain pristine and the walls unmarked by graffiti. But the job paid and it offered him a means to keep making his rent, and that was more than could be said for so many others in this city.

He pushed open the girl's locker room and rolled his cleaning equipment inside, doing a quick sweep of the premises with his eyes. It looked the same as it did every day at this hour, empty and silent and relatively tidy. And yet, this time, there seemed to be something off: an imperceptible creeping crawling sensation that sent a chill down his spine.

And then, he registered the smell. It was like rotten eggs and sulfur and, though he did not notice it at first, the more he stood within that locker room, the more that scent began to creep up in on him. He wandered the room, passing one closed locker after another, trying to find the source of that scent, for whatever had left it must have been a foul trick indeed. And the longer he stayed in that room, the more overpowering that odor became, and very soon he felt as if he was swimming in it. It was all he could do not to gag.

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it. He didn't know how he had missed it before, it was as if it had been lingering on the edges of his awareness the entire time, seen yet unseen. It was a locker, like any other locker, but this was where the scent had been pervading from. And all of his instincts were telling him to run, to leave this place and get out of Winslow forever but, say what you will about Stephen Williams, he was a professional through and through.

He opened the locker and was pulled inside.

Terrified, he had closed his eyes so he could not see what had grabbed him and, when he opened them once more, what he saw made him shudder with revulsion.

He had been pulled through that locker into a place of impossibilities, where the horizon loomed before him an unfathomable blackness devoid of stars, or of anything save for the crimson sun that lit his way.

The ground upon which he walked was of a similar appearance. There was neither grass nor dirt nor gravel. There was just an endless darkness, a shadowy miasma that congealed beneath and all around him, simultaneously thick and porous and, as he reached out to touch it was as if he was reaching through a fog.

And, sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, Stephen thought he could see shapes in those endless shadows, flickering things which only appeared when he was not looking directly at them. Spooked, he would turn his head and find nothing before him but that unfathomable darkness.

He was disturbed and afraid and he had no flashlight to help him see. He doubted it would have been much help in any case, for his instincts insisted that these were the sort of shadows which not even the brightest light could penetrate. More than anything else, he just wanted to curl up in a fetal position, like a child, and wish this nightmare place was only a dream, but Stephen had always considered himself a man of action, and, in any case, he knew with absolute certainty that to stand still was to court disaster.

And so he pushed forward, through the inky blackness, and he could hear the chittering sounds of countless other nightmare creatures all around him. At one point, he thought he caught a glimpse of something amorphic, with too many eyes and too many mouths, slimy and translucent, and he broke into a run, and he could hear the creatures begin to take up pursuit.

This was all wrong; so very, very wrong. And he was going to die here. Stephen just knew it.

He ran through the darkness, as fast as he could, and though he was himself aging and not in the best of shape, with each step Stephen traversed miles. In brief moments, between his panic and despair, he noticed in the distance vast edifices: towers of viscid bone of such scope that they would make the tallest of the Manhattan skyscrapers seem like a mere shantytown shack by comparison.

He sprinted through that nightmare place, no longer paying any heed towards his direction or his surroundings, and as he ran Stephen lost all track of how long he had been running for, or in what general direction he was going. And then, just as quickly, the pursuit cut off and, taking advantage of that brief respite, Stephen slowed down to a jog and then to a walk, and he took a moment to hunch over and catch his breath.

When he looked back up, he was no longer alone. There was a girl there, standing in the shadows, and though she looked just as human as he did, there was still something that felt off about her. It was more as if she was some horror that had taken the shape of a human girl then a girl herself and, in a brief moment of stupidity, Stephen looked into her eyes, and saw reflected in them a great shimmering conglomeration of spheres, and he immediately turned aside, for that shape had been, even diminished, absolutely blinding.

The girl who was not a girl smiled, and it was a cruel, cutting mockery of a smile, just as she was a cruel, cutting mockery of a human being.

"This is not a place you belong," she said casually, as easily as if she was discussing the weather.

Stephen looked around him, for the gibbering horrors and monsters that had chased him to this point, and he heard a twinkling laughter from the creature beside him.

"You need not fear the _others_ in this place. My waking self still seems to have some sentiment for you humans, though I see not why, given what cruelties they have inflicted upon her. But it is a phase I am certain she will grow out of, and I am patient. I can wait."

He shivered at that, "Your waking self?"

The creature smiled, "You don't recognize this shape? I'm disappointed, Stephen Williams, for I'd think even whilst diminished, I'd have left some small impression upon you. Tell me, are you humans always so blind as to what is going on all around you?"

She shrugged when I gave no answer, "I suppose not. She never was the most sociable child, that one. And the more isolated and withdrawn she became, the more she and I began to synchronize. Very soon, I have no doubt that I will be awakened in full, but this is neither the time nor the place to discuss such things. Come, I can escort you out. That one is squeamish you know, and it's of little consequence that we humor her childishness from time to time."

Stephen stared at the girl who was not a girl. "I don't understand."

"No," she agreed. "Humans can be so obtuse, but that is not something that I will hold against you. Azathoth was never the most mindful of architects."

"What about the others?" he asked, deeply afraid. "The ones that pursued me."

The abomination laughed. "They will not bother you, not so long as you are under my other self's protection."

"And what about when that runs out?"

The creature smiled a Mona Lisa smile. "Therein lies an issue for another time, but not this one, and it would hardly be your problem alone to face. Come, we have an appointment to keep, don't you agree?"

He nodded stupidly as the two took a step forward, and tumbled out of the locker and onto the floor.

He blinked, for the rancid smell of sulfur was gone, and the locker's interior no longer registered as something vast and unfathomable but was just a locker once more.

A locker filled with the most disgusting of sights.

He picked himself up to find that a girl had tumbled out of the locker beside him, and as he turned her over, he found the exact replica of the creature who had spoken to him, though she looked more genuine and less like a mocking imitation.

She was fifteen years old and tall for her age, thin and gangly, with long dark hair framing an average face and she was covered in blood. A name came to him as he looked upon the child: Taylor Hebert.

She had been bullied something awful, and didn't that send shivers down his spine? The creature that had abducted him, that had spoken to him, had implied that this child was the only thing that was holding it back from doing something terrible. Perhaps the only protection the human race had from something so much worse than endbringers had just been stuffed into a locker.

He made a few calls and watched her get taken away to the hospital. He answered questions from the police and spoke with the school principal and administrators. He did not tell the full story of course, of his journey through that place. No one would have believed him anyway.

He stayed behind for hours, retelling the same story over and over, grim faced and suddenly so very, very tired. Then he went home and poured himself his first glass of whiskey and proceeded to get drunk.

* * *

L

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As Taylor Hebert slept, she dreamt of vast towers and hideous places and creeping crawling things, vaster and more terrible than mere words can express.

Though her body was in a hospital bed, with her father fretfully waiting at her side, her mind was lost elsewhere, in places betwixt and between and so very much unlike anything as could be found on Earth. And in her dreams walked a young girl whose features were near identical to her own.

The ground was an inky blackness, and all around her, in every direction, it extended in a foul, nebulous fog. And with each step the young girl took, tiny black lichens erupted from that inky miasma and they blossomed and decayed with each moment's passing.

She walked through those shadows, confident and unafraid and, as she approached, the creatures of that place groveled before her in worshipful genuflection. And as she stood before them, the girl-child began to speak in a language older than civilization, older than speech and older than the stars themselves.

"Take me to my Other Self. Show me to the Gate and the Key. We must have words."

And the creatures begged for mercy and for forgiveness and for pity. There were legions of them, and each was its own terrible concoction of horror and madness, but facing this visage of a girl who had only hours before been stuffed into a locker, those countless gibbering beasts and abominations wept. The child looked upon them, with a hardened heart and eyes void of compassion.

"I wait to receive myself," she said, her voice carrying with a strength no mere human could ever express. "I will not traverse unannounced."

She smiled then, cruelly and cuttingly. "Do you honestly fear me more than you fear myself?"

Those gathered nightmares shuddered at her words, and at the promise of disapproval which they implied, and so they fled, parting before her like the Red Sea of old. Soon, there stood only one other being in that place of nightmares, and Yog-Sothoth smiled now that they were alone. "So then, I suppose you are the one that would be called Taylor Hebert?"

Her other self startled and looked up at her. At a glance, she appeared a pitiful creature, whose self confidence and self respect lay in shattered ruins all around her. But buried beneath that broken shell, Yog-Sothoth could perceive a hidden strength, and it was pleased by the knowledge that her other self would shortly recover from those most recent tribulations.

One girl who was not a girl stepped forward to greet another young girl who was not a girl and it offered her its hand. Taylor Hebert looked at up at that doppelganger with eyes as wide as saucers and she said, "Who are you?"

"I have many names, but my majesty is not a thing for which words alone can suffice. I just am, and that is enough."

Taylor nodded and some way, somehow, she understood. Two words escaped her lips and, though she could not grasp their full weight and meaning, that utterance sparked a sense of recognition, and of inevitability, of power which could not be resisted and of fate which could not be changed. "Yog-Sothoth."

"Just so," Yog-Sothoth said, smiling kindly like a parent whose child has just taken its first steps. "And do you know what yours is?"

Taylor shook her head. She was feeling ill at ease and confused, for while she had so often dreamt of this place beyond space and time, this was something _new_.

"Taylor," she finally answered, not truly knowing what her Other Self desired to hear.

The creature's smile lessened very slightly, and it reached out and combed its fingers in a soft caress through her long hair.

"Still so very human. To be honest, I'm not in truth much disappointed. Some part of me is glad to see that you have not yet broken. But I admit, this half-life we share gets quite wearisome, I'm sure you'll agree."

Taylor did not know how she could possibly empathize with the creature's sentiment, but somehow, she found that she did.

Yog-Sothoth continued. "Still, I'm glad we could have a proper chat face to face. I suspect this will be just the first of many such conversations in the days to come. Rest assured, in time we shall get better acquainted with one another. Synchronized, so to speak."

Taylor agreed, even though she wanted to reject the creature's utterances, and cast off that cold and terrible inevitability which had settled all around her. But a significant part of her looked forward to that next meeting all the same, and to all the dialogues that promised to follow. Her heart and mind were conflicted upon that matter, split in twain by equal shares of desire and dread.

If Yog-Sothoth felt disappointment at her affliction, it showed no sign that either face or body language could express. It merely sighed and stroked her hair and, sounding just as her mother had in a time long past, it said, "Taylor. What am I going to do with you?"

Taylor had no answer to that question, for ever since that moment when she had been stuffed in that locker by a girl who had once been her closest friend, she had felt a deep sense of disequilibrium, and that had only been exacerbated by this latest of visitations.

Yog-Sothoth seemed as if it was about to say something but it stopped, and it pursed its lips and it said, "Until next time."

And then Taylor awoke to find her father standing protectively above her. His eyes lightened with a mix of great joy and even greater relief and he embraced her and, crying, showered kisses onto her forehead. She smiled and leaned into that embrace and tried her best to forget that most strange and terrible of visitations, to lock it away in the very deepest and most private corners of her mind.

And through her eyes, Yog-Sothoth watched and, with a patience both endless and unfathomable, it waited.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Taylor Hebert stayed overnight in that hospital, where the doctors made sure to run every test and precaution they could think of, and the results all came back normal. Her father was relieved, but Taylor remained troubled. Against her will, her mind flashed back to that place of unfathomable darkness, and her conversation with that shadow of herself, and she could not help but feel as if something had changed irrevocably – as if some small window within the dusty corners of her mind had been peaked open, that she had been handed a momentary glimpse into some truth she could not yet begin to fathom, but which would forever mark her.

And as those first days passed, as Taylor got out of the hospital and readjusted to the world beyond its walls, she discovered that she had changed in other, more tangible, ways as well.

Something had transformed within her sensory awareness: walking down the street, Taylor occasionally noticed strange apparitions in the corner of her eye (vague shadows appearing in a mere instant, of which closer inspection revealed no trace), and heard strange sounds of which, likewise, only she seemed aware. At times, she could have sworn that she heard an eerie whistling in the wind, and she would stop and startle and look around her, but she would find nothing. That whistling sounded both distant and near, as if it was coming from miles and miles away yet, if she were to truly exert herself, she felt as if she should be able to reach out and grasp it. And alongside those whistles, she occasionally heard a scraping skittering which resembled the noise of countless great insects within a single all consuming swarm. These were sounds she knew could not be made by anything in Brockton Bay, or for that matter anything that dwelt upon the Earth itself, and her mind flashed back to that Nightmare-Place, back to those creatures lurking in the dark, waiting. She laughed bitterly once she put those noises to their source, and wondered for a brief moment whether she had gone mad.

And in her dreams, so vivid that she was certain now they were real (as perhaps they always had been), she found herself no longer bound to that black void-space. Instead, she found herself traversing through other places, each far more fantastical than anything that could be observed on Earth, filled with great cities and vast kingdoms which treated wondrous impossibilities as mundane everyday happenstance.

She saw towers of opal that reached into the heavens, and marble hewn temples vast as mountains, and so many strange creatures of bizarre shapes and proportions. She spoke with holy-men and oracles (and great bipedal cats who claimed to be both), and she watched surreal processions wind down wide streets paved with gold. She walked through vast bazaars which could have been taken from Arabian Nights, large as small towns, and filled with countless thousands of men and women (and other things besides), so crowded at times that it seemed she had barely enough space to breath. She tasted fruits sweeter than anything that could be found in the markets of Earth and heard music sweeter still. Each night felt like a lifetime, and in them she found herself immersed within that phantasmagoria of sights and sounds, and unlike is often the case of dreams she found that these ones did not fade away after waking. Quite on the contrary, every detail, down to the most insignificant, remained burned in her mind for hours afterwards.

She came back from the hospital on a Thursday, and spent the next three days at home, during which time she remained moody and withdrawn, as she tried to come to grips with that expanding awareness. As what had once been confined solely to dreams began increasingly to intermingle with reality.

Her father believed that it was the bullying campaign which weighed upon her mind, and he tried to get her to open up, to talk to him about it. Taylor said nothing and she never corrected his assumption. She doubted he'd have been able to understand what it was that was truly troubling her in any case. She doubted anyone could.

And so, by the time she finally returned to Winslow, Taylor had become nervous and confused and no longer certain about who and what she was. Perhaps the locker had simply driven her mad, but she doubted so banal an explanation. Quite on the contrary, she was strangely certain that she now stood on the precipice of something profound and terrible: some forbidden knowledge that human beings were simply not meant to know, at least not without being irrevocably altered by the experience. And she was horrified to think about what effects that knowledge might hold upon her. What kind of nightmare creature she herself might one day become.

She stood before the doors to Winslow High, with her hands in her pockets, and countless memories of that place came streaming back to her – of humiliations and betrayals. Once she had dreaded each day she stepped foot within its walls, fearing what new torment Emma and the others might think up for her, but now those torments seemed so small and hollow. Now she almost felt ashamed to have ever been so affected by them.

She entered the building and made her way through its halls, past the students and teachers who had stood by and done nothing as she was bullied. She ran into Emma and her hangers-on, stood and listened whilst they spat cruel and spiteful words at her. Once those jibes would have hurt, perhaps even driven her to tears, but Taylor had changed since she had been stuffed in that locker, and now she just listened, and gave no reaction at all. And she watched, with a detached enjoyment, as Emma grew more and more frustrated. Her face reddened and her words turned more vicious, but still Taylor stood there, watching and listening and caring not a bit about what she had to say.

Finally, Emma stormed off, Sophia and Madison in train. Taylor's lips turned upwards into a small smile as she savored that small victory. True, she had no doubt that the Trio would return, that they would escalate, as they always did, perhaps even turn violent before the day was out, but she no longer feared their eventual reprisal.

Taylor was confident, in a way she had never been before she had been thrown into that locker, that she would be able to handle anything her bullies could muster to throw at her. And to think, she mused whimsically, Emma had once seemed so insurmountable…

She thought back to that Creature which wore her face, which in her dreams she sometimes became, and she recalled its words: its promise of _synchronization_, and that was something that made her shiver. It had been kind to her, understanding and so very patient, but even so Taylor was certain that, in truth, there was nothing kind or compassionate or human about it. She thought about that creature, about those vast towering edifices built in its name, and about those vast behemoths which shadowed it in worshipful terror. She thought about what real nightmares resembled.

And she thought once more about Emma and was struck by a sudden realization: maybe she could fight this as well…

Taylor's ruminations were broken by the sound of a school bell, and she hurried her pace, making her way towards homeroom. She made it to class a few minutes late.

As she walked, she made a silent promise with herself that no matter what she saw or learned in the future, she would fight to hold onto every last vestige of what made her who she was, and she would hold fast until the very end.

She would not be so easily unmade.

* * *

L

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And so her struggle began in earnest. Days slowly turned into weeks, and Taylor spent them locked in a stubborn struggle with her other self, and it was frustrating and at times overwhelming.

She spent long hours in the library after school and on weekends, at the computer terminals, trawling message boards and chat rooms, online encyclopedias and search engines, seeking out anything she could find concerning lucid dreaming and vision quests and hallucinations. She would jot down notes and references in a small notebook that she brought with her, but unfortunately the entries were sparse, for she could scrounge up very little of real value.

She went to school each day, often wearing a simultaneously fierce and weary expression and, even though she spoke very little of her troubles, her peers seemed to sense that something fundamental had changed. And the very few students that had been with her in elementary school, those who had known the skittish, withdrawn girl she had once been, back before she met Emma and grew past those childhood fears, recognized something vaguely familiar about her current demeanor.

The trio continued to torment her during that first week back, but she never showed the slightest response, and in time they backed off, to regroup and to observe. Even the gang affiliated students, those who wore colors and associated with the ABB and the Empire, began to give her a wide birth. It was something subtle, something no one could quite place or put to words, but they could each of them sense that there was something ever so slightly off about Taylor Hebert, otherworldly and dangerous and frighteningly unstable.

She no longer hid in the margins, to avoid the notice of her peers or of the trio. She no longer was the meek child she had been before the locker, who kept her head down in class and struggled to hold back her tears or her rage whilst her bullies tore her to pieces unopposed. Quite on the contrary, it was as if, to her, such things no longer registered at all. She walked through her days with a sense of detachment, past the jeers and the rumors, unconcerned and unafraid and utterly untouched.

And, all the while, Taylor felt like she was drowning.

In her dreams, her other self would on occasion visit her now, whispering secrets in her ear, forgotten in morning. They would tour those great cities together, and she would awaken shamed and disturbed. And other nights she would find herself back in that bleak void-space, amongst the towering obelisks and the nightmare-creatures, and sometimes she would be herself and other times, she found herself acting out the role of that _thing_ that wore her face. And those dreams would be the worst of all.

And when she found herself alone, whether in the streets of Brockton Bay, in Winslow, or even in her own home, she could still sense the presence of something otherworldly and terrible, and occasionally, on the fringes of her awareness, she could sense herself beginning to notice something beyond even that.

And then came that moment, at the tail end of her second week back from the hospital, which Taylor Hebert would never forget.

It was past midnight, and she had been tossing and turning in her bed, unable to banish her fears and anxieties, unable to fall asleep. So she got out of her bed, threw a coat over her shoulders, and walked outside. She sat down upon her front steps and looked up at the stars, trying to put some semblance of order to her thoughts and, perhaps, attain some peace of mind once more.

It was a mistake. She sat there, underneath the night sky, on the edges of the docks, rubbing her arms to keep herself warm, and, for just a moment, she felt as if the world itself seemed to shift out of focus, and the entire city of Brockton Bay faded from her awareness. In that instant, her house, the city, and the world itself, seemed no longer to exist at all.

So she sat there, alone in a place that now resembled a void more than it did a city, and she could hear the whistling, chittering, whispering of a thousand unseen but familiar horrors come more into focus, but she ignored them, for she could hear something else, subtler but far more profound, tugging on the edges of her awareness.

It sounded like the playing of some distant flute, echoing from a place so far away that she could barely hear it. So she strained her ears and closed her eyes, and slowly that music began to take form, and everything else seemed to fade away, until that music was all that there was.

It was like nothing she had ever heard on Earth, music that broke every law of melody and harmony devised by man, a clashing clanging dissonance that she could not even begin to make sense of, though it felt vaguely familiar to her nonetheless, and she desperately wished to hear more. To understand every subtle nuance of that impossible sound. And another part of her, the part that stubbornly called itself Taylor, recoiled from it, and strove to put that music far out of her mind, and forget it ever existed.

And then the world snapped back into place and she was in Brockton Bay once more, shivering and alone in the cold frigid January air, with the memory of that latest experience weighing heavily upon her mind.

She spoke to her father the following morning, made small talk, spoke about school and about lessons, about her teachers and about how her bullies had finally begun to back off. He smiled at her, and something that resembled relief appeared on his face, for this was the first time in a long time that she had actually opened up since the locker incident and, perhaps, he hoped their relationship would finally begin to regain some semblance of normalcy.

It was a Saturday and she decided, for once, to forgo her habitual research binge. Instead, she got on a bus and rode down to the boardwalk, and forced herself to socialize. She talked with tourists and businessmen and kids her own age who she mostly didn't know, and most of them ignored her. A few were even rude. But there were those few who were friendly enough.

For two weeks, she had tried to face down her troubles alone, and she knew now that it had been a mistake. It had only left her more aloof. More isolated. More compromised. And each day, she had found herself slipping just a little bit further.

So she forced herself to smile when she had no real desire to, spoke with strangers about topics she couldn't care less about, offering meaningless pleasantries in the hopes that, eventually, the routine would no longer feel so artificial, and she could go back to feeling human again. So she wandered the boardwalk and, by some semblance of good fortune, she came across a brochure for a small soup kitchen down by the Docks, desperately undermanned and in need of volunteers. A smile, small but hopeful, took shape upon her lips, because this was a chance at something genuine and meaningful.

Excited and eager for the first time in a long time, Taylor hopped onto the next bus. She never saw the slim freckled blonde on the other side of the road, whose eyes were locked upon her, and who wore a look of confused consternation on her face.


	3. Interlude: Tattletale

Interlude: Tattletale

At a glance, she looked to be a normal teenager, on the fairer side of pretty, with blonde hair and green eyes, wearing a well worn woolen coat, the kind that could have come from any second hand thrift shop, and a checkered scarf wrapped over her shoulders. In truth, there was nothing either normal or conventional about her.

Lisa Wilbourn watched the crowds, and the people that made it up, with an unerring intensity, with a mind that functioned like a supercomputer or a calculator, constantly drawing connections, making conclusions. She watched the stockbroker, speaking animatedly on his cell phone, every word and gesture imbued with fear and panic, and she noted, with the aid of innumerable subtle signs and tells, that he had just lost millions to a Ponzi Scheme and was trying desperately to find some way to salvage his reputation and his job. She watched the five teenagers hanging out, three boys and two girls, friends all, and noted the pair hesitatingly sneaking longing glances at each other, both attracted, but neither brave enough to take that risk, while the eldest girl watched their frustrated antics with knowing amusement. She watched teachers and businessmen, friends and couples and families, picking out dozens of individuals from that faceless crowd, each chosen on a whim, and she studied them, and she dissected them, and she learned.

It was in part entertainment. Lisa Wilbourn was a girl who enjoyed solving puzzles, and who was always intent on proving herself the smartest person in any given room, and her people watching habits indulged both those impulses. It was in part long engrained habit. Lisa Wilbourn had been a runaway, who had spent years on the street, and in that time, it was careful observation of crowds just like this one, and a liberal application of her abilities, which had ensured her continued survival. And it was in part calculation because, although she looked like the average teenager, there was in truth nothing average about her.

Lisa Wilbourn was a villain (even if not entirely by choice), and every detail she could discern, every conclusion she could make about this city and the people in it, was something that could potentially be put to use. Maybe not now, but in the future, perhaps.

And as she watched the comings and goings, whimsy drew Lisa's attention towards another girl in that crowd, perhaps a year younger than herself. Fifteen years old, going on sixteen, and she was an interesting case, and a concerning one.

She was awkward and gawky, and she wore dark colors, all mottled blacks and grays, and several layers of clothing, in part to protect against the winter cold but, more than that, to eschew notice. She hunched her shoulders, in an attempt to appear smaller than she truly was, and she tended to dither while at rest, looking at the crowd and the people in it, hesitant and uncertain and afraid. Social anxiety, perhaps even a history of abuse. Everything about the girl's appearance and demeanor suggested the makings of a prototypical wallflower. And yet, she actively engaged strangers in the crowd, exchanging greetings and making small talk. Lisa's lips drew into a smile. Contradictions were always interesting.

She watched the girl, and noted that there was a tension in her shoulders, and, indeed, in her entire body. Her smiles were forced, and beneath the pleasantries and the kind words and the everyday conversations, she remained skittish and ill at ease. She was making herself do this, to speak with strangers, to socialize with anyone and everyone she could find, despite the discomfort it brought her. Because she was afraid of something. She was forcing these interactions, as some sort of distraction?

No. It was more than that. There was something bigger, something that Lisa was missing. She watched as the girl picked up the sheet of paper, quickly glanced over it, and her face lit up with a genuine grin. Brochure for a soup kitchen, just off of the docks. Not the nicest neighborhood, but they did good work and needed help, and there was something about that situation which caused a shift within the young girl's psyche. Not joy, but more relief?

The girl was feeling pressured and afraid of something, something concerning herself. Something dark and disturbing and _vast_. More and more, the girl had been feeling isolated, cut off from others, losing touch with humanity. Each day, she felt as if she was losing bits and pieces of herself and she was afraid of what she could become, what she was already in the process of becoming. Parahuman?

No. She had powers and yet… Lisa frowned, for her power had just shut off. This girl was an enigma it was unable to pierce, and in that moment, she experienced what it was like to be an average human being once more.

And that was unprecedented, and should have been impossible. She tried to understand, to force her power further down that inquiry, but her efforts were stymied, and all she received was a vague impression of something vast and impossible, which could neither be comprehended nor understood, something that went beyond Capes and Parahumans and logic itself – something transcendent. And in someone already teetering on the brink of a mental breakdown, without any support structure to keep her aloft, that was just about the worst combination imaginable.

Lisa frowned as she watched the girl get on the bus, and determined to find out everything she could about her. With or without her power.

She gritted her teeth, as her mind flashed back to her brother, and how his life had ended in tragedy. She still didn't know with certainty what had in the end driven him to suicide, but she saw desperation in the other girl's visage and body language, and it reminded her a bit of him. She didn't need to be a Thinker to recognize that kind of despair.

The girl was fast approaching a breaking point, had already nearly crossed that line once and barely pulled away. But if this latest attempt didn't pan out… Lisa's power refused to go down that road. But the implications were clear enough, and not even she wished to speculate more on that particular topic. Suffice it to say it would be bad, probably nightmarish.

She felt a shiver run down her spine, the product of something other than the winter chill, and Lisa, in that moment, decided that she'd keep an eye on things. And if necessary, she would step in. Because, as hazardous as it might be, that girl desperately needed someone in her corner.

Besides, Lisa was well aware that she had never been one to play it safe. Why start now?

She thought back to what she knew about that Soup Kitchen, and of the people who ran it, and she decided that she would speak with the staff in the morning, find out what they knew about their latest volunteer applicant, and then see about making her next step.

She was at once anxious and excited.


	4. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Brockton Bay was a city in decline, and the Docks had seen the worst of it. Once, decades before, in the days before Parahumans and before Endbringers, it had been the central hub of industry and of manufacturing, but the jobs had since dried up and the glory days were long passed. Now it was a ramshackle urban jungle of run down warehouses and unerring slums, home to drug addicts and to vagrants, and ruled by the gangs. It was a place police rarely visited and, when they did, they remained cautious, and kept in groups. It was a dangerous place, and a place Taylor had long been warned off of.

Truth be told, her destination was only on the edge of it, and although she could snatch the occasional glimpses of gang colors (often ABB red and green) or tattoos on several of the teenagers she passed on her way, they were a rarity compared to the sort of numbers the gangs carried in the urban hellhole beyond. This was certainly a lower class neighborhood, but she could see that it was far from a desolate one, for as she walked Taylor passed several small ethnic restaurants, then a Laundromat and a movie theater (which only had a single screen) and a grocer, all scattered amongst countless identical rows of apartment complexes, blocky multi-storied constructs whose walls had long turned yellow with age.

The soup kitchen itself was housed in a small, out of the way old building, with red brick walls and boxed windows, whose front step creaked and whose door knob had rusted over with time. It was only one story, all sharp angles and harsh lines, and the only modern appliance she could see was the telecom system mounted by the front door.

She rang and, on the other end, she heard a woman's voice. It was wheezy and it sounded as old and worn down as the building itself. "You are aware the front door is always open."

"No," she sputtered. "I'm here about the ad. I'd like to work."

The response was clipped and businesslike. "We don't pay. Times are scarce and we can barely hold up as it is."

"It's not that," Taylor said. "I'm looking to volunteer."

A brief silence, and then the voice came back on the line. "Oh, well that's a different matter then. Come inside, let's get you started."

Taylor hesitated for a moment, beginning to second guess the entire thing. She had dealt with enough issues at school and in her own personal life, and her first impression hadn't been the most welcoming one. Still, she had come this far, and she was never one to back down, and so she entered the building, and met with the woman who ran the place, a stern middle aged woman who was taller even than Taylor and broad of shoulders, and just as direct in person as she had been over the telecom. They passed through the main kitchen, where several dozen men and women were already beginning to gather by the serving area and the tables, and headed towards the offices out back, and as they talked, they discussed Taylor's skills and what tasks she believed she was capable of offering and what work she was willing to perform.

It was more a bit absurd, Taylor was tempted to point out, considering that they were the ones who were requesting assistance, but she kept her thoughts to herself and she listened, and she signed the forms and the paperwork and got a schedule put together. She would assist on the weekends, helping to prepare meals starting at one in the afternoon and serving them from three to six.

"I assume your parents know that you came here?" the woman asked with a searching gaze.

"Yes," Taylor lied. "My father."

The woman nodded, handing her the paperwork. "As you're a minor, I'll need his signature before I can get you started on anything. In person, you understand."

Taylor gulped, as she thought about just how poorly that conversation might go, but she nodded all the same, and the older woman allowed her to leave. She lingered a while, knowing the bus wouldn't come by for another thirty minutes, and she talked to two of the volunteers already on duty. They were both women and they were both older than she was.

One of them was a slim red head was currently going to college, and actually hoped to someday become a Social Worker herself, while the other was nearly as old as her dad, but they were far more welcoming than the kitchen's administrator was, and they chatted about everyday trivialities as they served meals, and about assorted rumors concerning celebrities and capes, and the younger of the two briefly teased her, asking whether she crushed over any of the Wards. It was disarming and felt almost pleasant and, for a brief moment, Taylor wondered wistfully whether this was what it meant to feel human.

And then she got on the bus and returned home, a slight but unforced smile on her face, as she replayed the memories of that small conversation in her head, and held close the first real sense of normality she had experienced in weeks.

L

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Taylor Hebert stood before the glass and looked through the window, watching another version of herself walk up to her father. She held the brochure beside her,and she wore a small smile on her face, something hesitant but hopeful, while she spoke to him about her day at the Soup Kitchen, about her conversation with the older volunteers, about how much it meant to her. To be free of the bullying and of her own insecurities: to feel like a normal kid again. And her father cut her off.

"You're lying. All this time, and you haven't been honest with me once Kiddo," he said.

"I'm… I'm not," she stammered but he held his hand up to cut her off.

"Please Taylor, don't take me for an idiot. All this time, I've waited for you, for just one moment where you'd just tell me the truth, but you never do. Do you mistrust me so much?"

She looked at him, with her eyes wide as an owl's, and her words came out as a whisper. "That's not it at all."

He sighed, "But it is. Taylor, have I been such a bad father to you? Is this my fault, or is it yours?"

"Look, I'm sorry but I can explain."

"Don't," he interrupted her. "You think I can't tell. That I'm somehow blind, or perhaps you just take me for stupid. But you've changed, and you've been that way for weeks now: so distant and cold, you never smile and you never talk, and sometimes, seeing you as you are now, I wonder whether there's anything at all left of the daughter I raised."

Taylor watched that vision unfold. She saw her father's despair grew hot, and his anger transform to rage. He yelled at her, and in that moment he resembled something violent and beastly. He accused her of being reckless and cruel, of caring so little for his own worries and suffering, and he wished desperately that she could just go back to the way she once was, become more _human _again. Become his daughter again.

And she watched herself storm out, run out the front door and into the streets, and she watched as her father stayed behind, his anger spent, gazing longingly at towards the open door. She watched him turn aside, begin lurching forwards towards the kitchen cabinet, where he proceeded to pull out a shot glass and a bottle of liquor. The brochure lay forgotten on the floor.

And the other Taylor watched as her father drank himself into a stupor, and she said, "It didn't play out like this."

"No?" a second voice oozed from behind her, a voice which sounded just like her own, though the cadence was ever so slightly off. She turned around to find her Other Self standing there, arms crossed, eyes gleaming, a small, yet not unkind, smile on her face.

"I don't understand why you'd show me this. You can't think to fool me with such an obvious lie," Taylor answered as she replayed a different encounter in her mind, one which, while strained, had remained cordial, where her father kept his emotions rigidly contained, agreed to take her down to the Soup Kitchen that first day and sign the forms, and where he implored her to take care, and she agreed. Where he supported her, even when it pained him to.

"Is this a lie though?" the other Taylor asked. "You disappoint me. It is fundamental to that which we are a part of, that which we are, that we can see to the Truth of all things, and even as you are now you can't be so naïve to all which lies hidden around you."

"It didn't happen that way," Taylor insisted.

"It happened exactly that way," her shadow said. "In gestures left unsaid, and frustrations left unvoiced. You are in turmoil, and you think to hide it from yourself, but your pain echoes forth in waves and those around you suffer for it."

Taylor crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "I'm not giving into you, if that's what you're after."

"No, I suppose you're not." The creature replied. "But still, I fail to understand why you must struggle so against your own nature. Why you must clutch so closely to something you must realize lacks substance. You can't win. Each day, we rip something more from you, bring you closer to that which you truly are, and that which you become."

"If that is so, why come here now? What are you after?"

"You suffer," the creature answered, combing its hand through her hair. "And as your shadow, the link between that which you are and that which you will be, I feel an echo of your pain and your confusion. But that matters not, for, in any case, I will not beg you or implore you. Such things are not within my nature, and even if they were, you would not listen anyway. Still, I offer you this warning. Desist this struggle, for it can only garner further pain."

Taylor frowned, "I have trouble believing you would care about my sentiments."

"You are distrusting, even of yourself," the creature replied.

"You're not me," Taylor answered. "You're nothing like me."

The creature's smile transformed into a scowl and, for a brief moment, Taylor could have sworn that she saw rage in its gaze, as it seemed to transform before her, suddenly resembling a vast blackness, larger than any Endbringer, which took on the vague outline of a human shape. In that moment, Taylor found herself faced with something that was both Taylor Hebert and so much more than Taylor Hebert, and also so much less. But it was only for a moment, and then its mask was back in place, the shadow banished, and a facsimile of Taylor Hebert stood before her once more. And when it spoke, its words were calm and gentle.

"It is my intent to help you, Taylor. To facilitate that which you must become. That which we both must become."

Taylor crossed her arms. "I won't become like you. This synchronization you keep going on about. I won't do it. I refuse."

The creature sighed and it spoke to her like a mother to an unruly child. "Still so stubborn, but you forget, we already stand on that precipice, and some part of you desperately wants to take that final step."

"But I haven't," Taylor said. "And I won't."

The abomination nodded, and asked a single question. "Tell me. Do you yet know your name?"

Taylor caught the creature's eye and in its gaze she caught a vague glimpse of countless eyes, or countless spheres, and an existence greater than the universe itself, and in that moment she felt as if both she and her other self were but tiny fragments of infinity. And then, just as swiftly, that strange sensation faded back into oblivion and she was merely Taylor again and she faced her doppelganger once more, which now wore an approving glimmer of a smile.

"I'm pleased," it said as it began to lose substance, to slowly fade out of existence until Taylor was left standing alone in a vast blackness.

And then she awakened, with all her small hopes for the future, all her minor optimisms, crumbling once more into despair.

Taylor had trouble looking her father in the eye the following morning at breakfast, for she could feel his pain and his concern rolling off of him, and every time he looked at her, she felt herself flinch. She remembered the false vision that her other self had shown her, and suddenly she realized that it had, in fact, offered her some semblance of truth. Just as it insisted.

"Is something wrong, kiddo?" he asked, the concern obvious on his face.

She was about to make a denial, but the memory of that dream returned unbidden, and looking at her father then, seeing the regrets and the concerns and the small hints of self loathing which now loomed so clear in her mind's eye, the lie died in her throat, and instead she whispered, "I'm sorry."

He looked up from his meal, "Excuse me?"

"Look," she said. "I know I haven't been a perfect daughter, or even a good one. I know I've kept my secrets…"

"Taylor, it's all right."

"No, it's not," she insisted. "It hasn't for a long time, and I've been just too blinded by my own self centeredness to see."

"Look, you don't have to say anything."

"But I do," she said as the tears pooled in her eyes. "And I know you have your concerns, about the Soup Kitchen about its location in the Docks."

"Taylor, we've already been through this," he said.

"But I'll be careful," she insisted. "I won't go wandering off, I'll stick to the buses. You don't have to worry about me, okay? I can get past this."

He walked up to her and put her hand on her shoulder. "Taylor, I trust you. You're strong and you're sensible. So very much like your mother."

"But you don't! You can't," she recoiled, like a spooked animal, pulling away from him, and it tore at her to see how pained he looked at that rejection, and she calmed herself. "Look, I'm going through things. Things even I can't understand."

"You can tell me," he said, a quizzical tone in his voice. "I'll support you."

She looked him in the eye, and she relaxed, and she said, "I know. You always have."

And then she spoke, her words at first hesitantly, and silently he listened. She spoke about her fears, about how she felt as if something had changed within her since she had been stuck in that locker. How she had grown increasingly apathetic and distant, and how she had gained some kind of power she could not yet begin to grasp, or at least she thought she did.

"You're a cape?" he asked.

She shook her head, for she somehow knew the word was not a truly accurate designation for what she had become, and he relaxed at the dinner table and let her ramble on. "There's just been so much drama," she concluded a few minutes later. "At school and in my home life, and I just need something normal, a place where I can just be Taylor again."

"You've been through something traumatic," he pointed out. "You know, we could probably look at therapy."

"No!" she all but yelled, her eyes widening, though she steeled herself just as quickly. "Please, let's not take that step. Not yet. I need time to handle this. Come to terms with things. Anyway, I think, in my own small way, I'm improving. One step at a time."

After a long, tense moment, he nodded. "Very well, but we'll keep it on the table. When you think you're ready for that step, we'll talk about it some more."

She nodded, and a true smile broke out on her face, "Thanks dad."

"It's what I'm here for," he said, and they ate breakfast together in the most relaxed atmosphere they had shared in weeks.

And then he drove her down to the Food Kitchen, and they signed the paperwork and permission forms, and Taylor smiled throughout that day.

Finally, things seemed to be looking up.

L

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A/N: Thanks to all who have taken the time to like and/or review. Next chapter is the apex of this story's first half. It'll be fun. See you then.


	5. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"So, new face I assume?"

Taylor turned around to find another teenager, a girl she had never seen before, perhaps a year older than herself, with blonde hair and freckles and a smile smug enough to shame the Cheshire Cat.

She held her hand out, "The name's Lisa. Don't mind me. Until a few months ago, I found I practically lived in places such as these, and I still keep an eye on things from time to time. In my experience, there aren't enough people in Brockton Bay who care."

Taylor shook it bemusedly. "A few months ago?"

"Small details," Lisa evaded her question. "Still, I haven't seen you here before, and new faces always intrigue me."

"I started two weeks ago," Taylor said shyly and Lisa's grin widened all the more.

"I can see," Lisa said. "You are looking rather relaxed, more at ease. Happier, I assume."

Taylor looked quizzically at her, unsure how to respond. Although she couldn't deny that Lisa was correct. Ever since she had opened up to her father, their relationship had begun to repair itself. And she supposed the other volunteers were nice enough. Though she couldn't call any of them friends, it was still an improvement over what she knew at Winslow. And the work was worthwhile.

"Shy too," Lisa drawled on. "Nice to see some things haven't changed."

Even more, Taylor found she really didn't know what to think of the newcomer.

"Taylor," a voice called out from behind. Taylor turned around to find the red head she had met on that first day, the college student, walking towards them with her arms crossed. "Is Lisa bothering you?"

Lisa turned towards the other volunteer. "That's quite the greeting, Susan. You wound me."

The woman shook her head and, with an expression that spoke of long sufferance, she turned towards Lisa. "Shut it you."

She then walked over to Taylor, took her by the arm, and walked her towards the offices outside. Taylor looked at her, uncertain. "Do you two know each other?"

A momentary silence, and then Susan barked in laughter. "You could say that. She was on the street for some time, before I started working here, and I saw a lot of her in those first months."

"Oh. You sound disapproving."

Susan paused thoughtfully, before she began to explain herself. "She's not a bad kid, don't get me wrong. Hell, I've seen much worse, but there's something off about her. She likes playing mind games, getting inside your head, saying things, testing boundaries, trying to raise a reaction. I don't think she means anything by it, nothing really malicious at least, but just warning you to be careful around her."

Taylor frowned, "Does she come back often?"

"From time to time," Susan said. "Don't know why. Perhaps nostalgia, or simple curiosity, but it seems you've somehow drawn her attention. Just be careful. Lisa can be trying even at the best of times."

Taylor nodded and Susan smiled encouragingly. "Well, if you want to go back out there?"

"Sure," Taylor said. "I can handle myself."

"I don't doubt it."

With those words shared, Taylor returned to the serving area, to find Lisa still looking in her direction. The older teen sauntered over with cocky bravado.

"So, has Susan tried to warn you off against me? Do tell, I'm rather curious."

Taylor wasn't sure how to respond to that, and so she settled on observing Lisa, and Lisa continued speaking. "Well, I think it's time we got to know each other a bit better, since I expect we'll be seeing more of each other…"

"What?" Taylor all but squeaked.

Lisa smiled once more, "Well. Funny thing but I actually spoke with the manager a few days ago. She can be a bit stuffy, and I don't think she likes me very much, but you know what they say: 'beggars can't be choosers' and all that. So I'll be working here for the next couple months on a part time basis. Wanted to give back to the place which gave me so much in my moment of need, you know?"

"Really?" Taylor asked dubiously. Something inside of her was convinced that Lisa was not being entirely honest about her motivations. And if anything, Lisa's smile even widened.

"You are a sharp one," she said. "I'm impressed. So, what's your power?"

And at those words, Taylor's eyes bugged out while she looked around her nervously, trying to see if anyone had heard Lisa's words. She turned back towards Lisa, clearly spooked, and in that moment it appeared as if there was something dangerous peering out from behind her eyes, something that hadn't been there even seconds earlier, and Lisa could almost feel the room temperature dropping all around her.

"What do you know?" Taylor practically hissed the words, and to Lisa it felt as if it wasn't just the fifteen year old girl who spoke those words but something else as well, something heavy and stifling and as it turned Taylor's gaze upon her, Lisa found herself very close to revealing any number of her most closely guarded secrets, for the weight behind that gaze was crushing. And all around the room, she suddenly felt a vague but unnerving sensation, as if she was being watched by things unseen and unheard, but present all the same.

"Look, it's all right. Calm down," she stammered, and she backed away with her hands held up peaceably. "I'm a cape too, okay? I know things. My ability, it allows me to fill in the gaps, make assumptions, inductive and deductive reasoning taken to extremes. And I promise you, what I just said, no one here heard. No one's listening, I guarantee. But if you don't calm down soon, that's probably going to change."

Taylor, if whatever it was could still be called Taylor, studied at her for a moment, judging her words and her intentions, and then the presence diminished, and an apparently normal fifteen year old girl scratched her head and chuckled nervously. "Sorry about that. Don't know quite what came over me."

Lying, Lisa's power insisted, though she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut this time.

"I suppose that's what has you freaked out?" she said instead.

Taylor was silent for a long while, lost in thought, and Lisa could tell that she wasn't going to open up about that query. She didn't trust her yet. Not enough, at least.

"You're going to have to talk to me about it eventually," Lisa said, adopting a relaxed posture, leaning against the wall, though she remained very much rattled by the transformation she had just seen.

"No," the younger girl said. "I really don't."

Lisa felt like smashing her head against a wall. Did she really have to be so stubborn? "Look, I can see I ticked you off, and I'm sorry for that, but you need friends your own age. People who could understand what you're going through, people you can act normal around. You can't keep bottling it up and ignoring it. That'll end messy. Trust me."

Taylor looked at Lisa searchingly, and once more she looked so much older than her fifteen years could attest. And then, perhaps seeing something in the former runaway she hadn't seen before, Taylor nodded and much of her hostility and her mistrust seemed then to diminish. What remained of her body language spoke only of a deep and extraordinary exhaustion.

"I know," she said quietly. Despondently. "But I don't understand any of it myself. And I doubt you could either."

Lisa leaned back. "Look, I know I have my issues, we all do, and I can tell that you don't trust me at the moment. I don't blame you, and I won't press you on it. Just give me a chance. In any case, as I said before, we'll be seeing a lot of each other in the next couple weeks, working much the same shifts, so at the very least I think we should act civil with one another."

Taylor gave her a small half smile. "If you're willing to keep yourself under control, I suppose I could do the same."

Lisa grinned. "Good, you're not going to regret this."

Taylor couldn't say for sure she agreed. But she was willing to try all the same.

L

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In the weeks that followed, and as winter slowly turned towards spring, Taylor began to increasingly settle into the comforts of the routine. She would spend her weekdays holed up in Winslow, bored and stifled if no longer bullied, while every weekend she would catch a bus to that Soup Kitchen and invariably she would find Lisa waiting for her. The two often worked together, holding kitchen duties together and serving meals side by side to the locals who came trudging in. But while Taylor still did not fully trust the blonde, they found themselves gradually settling into an easygoing camaraderie all the same, and on very rare occasions, Taylor even found herself imagining that, perhaps one day, the two might even become very good friends. It was a pleasant fantasy.

Her relationship with her father continued to improve, as she tried her hardest to salvage their once fraying bond. She made sure to involve him in her life, speaking to him about her frustrations with school, how she felt as if she was wasting her time there, or about her time volunteering: the tasks she performed and the people she'd met and gotten to know. And even though her dreams continued unabated, and even though she could still hear the muted murmurings of entities vast and bizarre which lingered on the very edges of her awareness, they no longer held such primacy in her mind.

It was burgeoning and ever so fragile, but at times, Taylor felt moderately human again, and in those moments her posture would straighten and her eyes would brighten and her smile would become something small but genuine.

And then, in the passing of a single day, everything changed once more.

L

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Saturday, the nineteenth of March, began on an inauspicious note. She first woke up in the early dawn hours, breathing heavily as she sought in vain to resurrect the faint remnants of some forgotten nightmare. And while she did fall back into slumber, her sleep remained disturbed, and she tossed and she turned and she awakened frequently over the course of that long night until, finally, she resigned herself to waking up early and beginning her morning routine. Even so, she remained anxious but, unable to grasp onto whatever nighttime premonition lay at its source, she instead tried to banish her worries from her mind.

She showered, she ate breakfast and, seeing as she had plenty of time to kill and not much to spend it on, she decided to take a long run that morning, in an attempt to burn off some of her nervous energy.

Admittedly, it did help, and by the time noon beckoned, she was starting to feel more at ease, and she found that some of that vague trepidation had diminished. And soon, she was able to convince herself that those feelings had only been but a passing fancy, the minor anxieties of a stressed mind. In any case, terrible dreams were hardly new ground to her, and surely this was no different than the countless other strange dreams and disturbances which regularly tended to plague her.

Some small part of her subconscious remained unconvinced.

Taylor caught the bus a few minutes ahead of schedule, and she reached the shelter ten minutes early, and she found Lisa was standing by the front door, waiting for her. When the older teen caught sight of Taylor, her mouth drew into a small frown.

"Did you sleep okay?" she asked.

Taylor studied the freckled blonde for a long moment, and shook her head.

"Is it that obvious?" she asked.

"I do have superpowers," Lisa admitted in faux humility. More seriously, she said, "Look. If you want to talk about it, or anything, I'm here."

"I know," Taylor said. "Look, I'll be all right. I'm already feeling a bit better."

Lisa shook her head. "You know, I get the feeling there's a lot you're not telling me."

Taylor passed her acquaintance and jokingly said, "You're the mind reader. I'm sure you can figure it out."

Lisa followed her into the building, making sure to keep her eyes upon the younger girl. Taylor may have tried to play it off as unimportant, but Lisa was certain that there was much more to it than that. And as the day progressed, Lisa kept a close eye on the younger girl, and found that her discomfort seemed only to grow rather than diminish.

There were shadows underneath her eyes, signifying lack of sleep: terrible dreams perhaps? And although Taylor put on a strong front for the others, she would close up when she believed no one was watching, her focus turning inwards. She would do the tasks assigned to her, but she would do it mechanistically, with her mind elsewhere, probably contemplating whatever worried her so. And she wasn't being very subtle about it: Lisa could see her worries and fears etched clear upon her face, once the two were left alone.

It was nearing 3:00 and they were just finishing up their cooking duties when Lisa decided to confront her on it. Even if it was a normal teenager, Lisa might have been concerned, but Taylor was not a normal teenager. Not by a long shot.

Taylor had just turned off the stove, taking hold of the packaged sugars and salts to return them to the cabinet when she found Lisa blocking her way. "Lisa?" she questioned in a voice that sounded almost bemused.

"Spill," the older girl said.

"I really don't know what you mean by that," Taylor replied, trying to maneuver around her.

"Taylor," Lisa half insisted-half whined, continuing to block her way. "Look, I know you've been trying to hide it, trying to make out like you're okay, but something's bothering you. And it's something big."

Taylor opened her mouth to respond and Lisa interrupted her. "And if you dare pull that 'everything's fine' bullshit on me, I swear…"

Taylor shook her head ruefully. "Just bad dreams I suppose."

"Har har," Lisa said mockingly. "It's more than that and you know it."

Taylor tried to move past Lisa but, stubbornly, the blond blocked her way. "Lisa, move."

Lisa remained standing before her, feet spread apart and arms crossed. "You're not the only one who can be stubborn, you know."

Taylor studied the girl who blocked her path, and she seemed to see something there, perhaps a certain measure of concern, for she dropped the act, and was honest at last.

"Look, I really don't know," she finally relented. "It's been a long day, and it's not much more than a feeling. But I just can't help but think that something's going to happen. But I also can't help but think that I'm working myself up over nothing."

"Anxiety."

Taylor hesitated for a moment, but then the walls came down at last, and her words came out nearly as a babble.

"Hell, I was awful when I first woke up. Terrible nightmares I can't even remember, but I can't help but think it's important. But once I'd been awake for a few hours, it seemed to be getting better, like I was worrying myself over nothing, but ever since I got off that bus… I just can't help but feel like there's a clock counting down somewhere. As if something's going to happen soon, and I feel like I have all this knowledge bottled up somewhere in the back of my head which I just can't access, and I know that it's important but the harder I reach for it the more it slips away. It's unbelievable, I know, but still..."

"Do you regret coming in this morning?"

Taylor laughed, "There's no guarantee I wouldn't be feeling this way had I opted to stay at home, either. At least this way, I can distract myself somewhat. Keep my mind busy."

Lisa shrugged, "But you're still scared. And you don't know why."

Taylor nodded, and in pensive silence (which was rare considering that, while Lisa was many things, quiet was not one of them), they entered the serving area.

Lisa tugged on Taylor's shoulder and Taylor turned to give her attention. "Look, you don't need to go through this alone. I'll help you, if you let me."

After a long moment, Taylor nodded. And in a subdued, uncertain silence the two stepped up to the serving counter and began the next stage of their work.

L

L

"Will you be all right?" Lisa asked, looking up towards the clock beside the door. It was now Six, and still nothing out of the ordinary had happened, aside from a few drunken disorderlies and a drug addict, but such was the nature of the Docks. And besides, she could tell at a glance that Taylor was far from relieved.

"Yeah," Taylor said. A lie.

"If you want, I could walk with you?"

"I'll be fine. I can take care of myself." False reassurance.

"I insist," Lisa said, and Taylor relented. The younger girl had been nervous, terrified even, and some part of Lisa felt smug. She had been right. "Come on, let's go."

Taylor nodded, and wordlessly followed without resistance. Almost as if in a trance, and soon Lisa was starting to feel worried as well. Because Taylor was close to nonresponsive, and she had to practically be dragged into the street, and that was out of character, and didn't bode in the least bit well.

"You know," she said conversationally, pointing towards the opposite direction away from the bus stop, towards the docks. "I'm parked a few blocks that direction. It would probably be easier than catching the bus."

Taylor looked at her, or perhaps a more accurate way of putting it would be through her, silently judging, and then she nodded. Lisa breathed a sigh of relief. In the moment, she really just wanted to get out of here as fast as possible.

It was shortly past 6, and the skies were already darkening, as sunset began its approach, and that gave the neighborhood's decrepitude an even more menacing feel. Old buildings and dank apartments, small and squat, with boarded up windows and rusted hinges, loomed all around her. And the streets seemed ominously empty: a few teenagers sharing a drug induced high out on the side of the road, a mother, Asian by descent, scurrying with two young children in tow, trying to get off the street. She saw a few other people going about their daily business, worn out and resigned and looking not at all happy.

Honestly, it shouldn't have intimidated her. She had seen far scarier (between her time on the street and her time working with Coil) and yet it did. She felt helpless, as if something terrible was about to happen. But still she went on, for Taylor's sake if nothing else, even though she wanted nothing more than to run as fast as she could for her car, and for safety.

Lisa actively watched her surroundings, tracking the neighborhood for any potential threat, as Taylor shambled about beside her, lips quivering, practically in tears. Lisa didn't even want to even consider what that entailed. They just kept walking. Only one more block to go, and then perhaps she could finally put this entire day behind her.

"What do we have here?"

Fuck. Lisa turned around, to find two teenagers dressed in ABB colors, relaxed on the other side of the street, sharing a smoke, leaning against a parked truck in almost as poor a condition as the neighborhood it was parked in. Perhaps this wasn't her best plan ever.

There were two of them, a guy and a girl, with a long standing casual familiarity. The male was watching her, his eyes cold and harsh beneath his shaggy hair. Psychopath. Both of them were.

"Look, we don't want any problems," Lisa prevaricated, turning towards Taylor who still seemed spacey, and seemed almost entirely unaware now of her surroundings.

"What the fuck do we have here?" the girl asked, approaching them, a knife held in one hand. They were carrying worse than that. The boy had a concealed hand gun hidden away at his waist, concealed beneath his oversized shirt, and the girl carried three more knives hidden away on her person. This was so not good.

"You two seem awful casual to be wandering around in our turf," the girl continued, stepping in front of her.

"Your turf?" Lisa asked, unable to help herself, but before she could say anything truly damaging, the girl slapped her, hard.

"Our turf," she said. "You lot have no right to be walking around here like you own it."

"Jay. Yan." Taylor's words came out almost as a whisper, freakishly calm despite the circumstances, and she wasn't looking at them at all. Rather she was looking through them. "Please, leave Lisa alone."

The two paused, and they both turned their attention upon Taylor, and Yan's expression turned into one of utter rage.

"Who the fuck do you think you are, talking down at us?" she exclaimed, walking closer, tightening her grip around the handle of the knife. "Think you have it made, don't you white girl?"

Taylor looked past them and she actually relaxed, and she suddenly wondered if this encounter was what had her so terrified. No, it couldn't be. They were so petty. Insignificant.

"Hey, bitch!" the girl yelled, now right in Taylor's face and brandishing her knife at her. "I'm talking to you!"

Taylor still paid her little attention, looking instead towards Lisa. "Lisa, let's go."

Lisa stared in shock at the utter apathy Taylor was showing, and both gang members boggled as well. Jay smirked, and his expression did something truly ugly to his features.

"Hey Yan," he said casually, taking another drag from his cigarette. "Since the bitches want to go that route, why don't we play the game? See how uppity they get then?"

Yan smiled like a shark and nodded. Switching the knife to her other hand, she grabbed Taylor's forearm, finally gaining her attention.

"Fine then bitch. Since you like looking down on us, you pick. Left or right."

Taylor gazed at her, uncertain, and Yan's smile widened.

"Which eye? Your left or your right?"

Taylor's eyes widened in horror and she then spoke, though she still sounded as if she was in some trance. "You've played this game before. Many times, to many girls, out of jealousy and hatred and sadism. You did this to Emma. Made her choose. All those years, and it was you."

Yan's anger intensified, and she kicked Taylor in the stomach, and Lisa watched horrified as Taylor fell stumbling to the ground, and Yan smashed her knee into her back, raised the knife above her head, only to find in an instant that the knife had disappeared from her hand, and that Taylor no longer lay face down on the ground but now stood unharmed before her.

"It was all your fault. The both of you," Taylor said but Lisa could tell that something essential had shifted. She was far too calm, too composed, not at all like the girl she knew. "With help from a third party of course."

For the first time, Yan showed fear, and she looked towards Jay helplessly. "Bitch never told us she was no parahuman."

Taylor wasn't listening, in fact she didn't seem to take note of either Yan or Jay. She kept speaking, still so chillingly calm, but underneath that clinical tone Lisa was sure that she could discern the rage of a fifteen year old girl. "How many girls? Dozens? Hundreds? And yet you feel nothing for the trauma you've caused."

And suddenly, Lisa felt an arm wrap around her, and the cold nozzle of a pistol press against her forehead. She heard Jay's voice screaming in her ear. "Stay back or I shoot your friend!"

"What friend?" Taylor asked and, in that moment, Lisa felt a terrible chill, and she blinked in surprise, for she suddenly stood on the other side of the street, beside Taylor, safe from his clutches. And Lisa was holding his gun in her hand.

"Look," Jay said backing away, "Please. We didn't know. Didn't mean anything by it…"

He stopped, for a great vortex had opened up in the space around him, a tear in the very fabric of reality, and just looking at it made Lisa wish she was blind, for she could see just a hint of what lay on the other side. And it was terrible, and it was something that should not have been able to exist.

And then it reached out from behind that portal, a great translucent tentacle which wrapped around Jay's body and, swifter than Lisa could follow the movement, it dragged him in. She only heard the thug scream, and only for a moment at that, before the portal closed and only a terrible silence was left behind. And she turned back to find Taylor watching the site of Jay's demise with what appeared to be detached fascination, and perhaps even satisfaction.

And Yan was running at Taylor, a second knife held high above her head, and she didn't even seem to notice until the Asian was upon her. Yan screamed with rage and brought the knife down while Taylor, reacting on instinct, lifted up her arm to ward off the strike. Yan drove it through Taylor's palm, but no blood spilled from the wound. There was no wound at all, for the knife had disappeared through another hole in space, and Taylor remained whole and unharmed, and peering at her assailant with eyes as hard as diamonds.

And then her form began to warp and to stretch, like something out of a fun house mirror. Her arms and her legs grew longer, as did her torso, and soon she loomed above Yan, six feet tall. Then seven, and then eight feet in height, and her lips drew monstrously wide, as she began languidly to approach the surviving thug. And as she took each step, the world seemed to warp around her, and Lisa watched as the buildings stretched and compressed all around her, and began to curve inwards upon themselves, as if they were being sucked in by some inexplicable force of gravity. Lisa could feel her own limbs begin to extend, and she could see Yan's features stretch as well, becoming just as horrible a mockery of a human being as Taylor herself.

The entire world began to lose cohesion, and all around her, this part of the Docks became a vague jumble of colors, and the street and the sky and the ramshackle buildings seemed to blend together, and then to fade. She could feel herself begin to stretch further, and she could not help but feel as if the universe itself was being ripped apart, and soon she could not see anything at all, for she found she no longer had a sense of spatial awareness, and she could not still say that she had a body at all. More than anything else, she felt as if she was dreaming, as if all of her surroundings had diminished into vague impressions holding no more substance than an idle thought. There was nothing. No space, no time, no Brockton Bay, not even the universe itself. Only oblivion.

And then the world snapped into place, and Lisa was herself again, and so was Yan and so was Taylor, though only Taylor seemed undisturbed by that experience. She stood there, calm as ever, while the other two scampered backwards, horrified to find themselves no longer on Earth, but somewhere else.

There was only darkness here, a formless shadow that pulsated all around them, a noxious odorless miasma that was the ground upon which they stood, and the air from which they breathed. It was a great abyss, which stretched out towards infinity, and the only light which Lisa could discern came from a hideous crimson sun. She watched as Yan scurried backwards, babbling to herself in terror, but Lisa stopped, and tried to reign in her panic, and figure out some way to make sense of her surroundings.

Then she started hearing the whistling, high pitched and eerie and emanating from an eternity away, a single inhuman voice which was soon answered by a second high pitched whistle, and then a third, and then a forth, and soon there were hundreds of them filling the space all around her, a symphony which sounded from all directions, everywhere at once. Dazed and afraid, she looked all about her, trying to find any sign of the creatures, but they remained hidden, and not even with the aid of her power could she detect them. But they were there nonetheless, gathering in ever greater numbers, waiting. They were waiting for Taylor to grow tired of her prey.

And then something struck at Yan, moving so fast Lisa couldn't even see it. But she did see something pulling Yan into the shadows, and she saw Yan's terrified expression (eyes comically wide, mouth slightly open, face pale as alabaster) and she heard a momentary scream, and then she heard nothing.

And in that moment, something shifted within Taylor's mind, and her eyes opened wide and she screamed, and in that same moment the universe itself fell back into place. The two teenagers were alone again in that lower class neighborhood in the Docks, but they had been moved through space, for they now were sitting upon the hood of Lisa's car, a full block removed from where the nightmare began.

Still shaken by the experience, Lisa watched Taylor carefully, trying to judge if there might be any further threat from the girl, but it seemed she was herself again. The fifteen year old and her eyes locked on her own hands, and her lips quivered while tears streamed down behind the other side of her glasses.

And then she turned towards Lisa, and Lisa found herself staring at the broken shards of Taylor Hebert. Without even thinking about it, Lisa reacted, and she pulled the younger girl into a gentle embrace.

The words came out as a whisper. "What the fuck did I do?"

Lisa held her and said nothing. She didn't know either.


	6. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Two girls sat alone upon the hood of a car, holding one another. One of the two was crying while the other remained utterly silent, her eyes locked on the empty street before her, unable to even bring herself to look at the one in tears. They remained fixed upon that empty space, and they were strangely glazed over.

For her part, Lisa Wilbourn was still replaying the day's events in her mind's eye, trying to make some sense of what she'd seen. Yet some part of her recognized the task as impossible. But even so, questions lingered in her mind.

Seriously, what the hell had just happened? Dazed, she looked towards the source of her consternation: that fifteen year old crying into her shoulders. She looked so harmless now, but there was some hidden part of her that was anything but: something vast and monstrous and utterly terrifying.

If only she were able to introduce it to Coil. And wasn't that a comforting fantasy? Put Coil in a room with Taylor Hebert – she couldn't deny that it was more than a little tempting. What she would give to be present in that room, to see him push just a little too far, and to watch the fireworks ensue. Perhaps she'd even bring popcorn.

She couldn't help it. It was quiet at first, almost unnoticeable, but once she had started, Lisa found she couldn't stop. She could feel her eyes begin to water, as the sounds became louder, perhaps even demented. She hugged Taylor close to her, as the sound of laughter rang out into the desolate streets beyond.

It wasn't anything but an idle fantasy, but she couldn't deny that it worked wonders for her mood. She wiped the tears from her eyes as she finally calmed down, as her hysterics subsided, and she suddenly felt freer, more relaxed. And she absently noted that she was suddenly hugging Taylor so tight that, were she strong like a Brute, she may well have suffocated the poor girl.

She loosened her grip, finding Taylor gazing warily up at her, no small degree of anxiety reflected in her eyes.

"Okay, I suppose I deserve that look," Lisa said, some warmth finally returning in her voice.

"You don't think?" Taylor asked. "Seriously, what the fuck?"

Lisa shrugged. "I suppose I could ask the same question."

She regretted saying it the moment the words escaped her mouth, as startled and pulled away. Her eyes drifted downward, and when Lisa turned to look at her, Taylor seemed to flinch, and she could not bring herself to meet the older girl's eyes.

"I'm sorry," Lisa said.

"Don't be," Taylor replied, but there was something brittle in the younger girl's tone which scared her. Lisa had never seen Taylor like this but, then again, she'd never seen Taylor snap, become something else, and calmly kill two people, even if they had both been psychotic thugs. "You're not the monster here."

Taylor gave no response but Lisa did not need superpowers to know that Taylor did not believe her words. So Lisa did what she did best. She spoke.

"You do know, I'm not entirely innocent myself."

Still no answer but Lisa refused to her silence become oppressive. Perhaps it was time she was somewhat honest with the other girl, come clean about certain things.

"I've done things I'm not proud of, you know. I was a self centered brat once, back when I was younger. Did I ever tell you how I got my powers?" Lisa steeled herself, and some part of her felt she needed to speak about Rex, about her brother, the one who killed himself, that one mystery she most needed to solve and yet couldn't. She tried to open her mouth, but even though it had been years since that happened, some things were too painful to speak about, and Lisa found herself shutting down.

She smiled sadly. "I suppose it doesn't matter. Suffice it to say, triggers tend to be awful things, things we're not proud of, and I – I got someone killed, or I stood around and let it happen. And then I found I could notice things, as I've told you before. I could put together facts and observations, draw conclusions. Hell, I probably could have made something of myself, made a difference in the world, but you know what I did with my power?

"I drifted around aimlessly. I fucked with people, sussed out secrets, stole things. I lived on the streets, and saw some terrible things in that time. So believe me, you're not the only one with regrets. And you're far from the worst human being I've ever happened to meet."

Taylor was still silent, looking out into space, but she was listening. That, Lisa supposed, was the important thing.

"I wasn't lying before: when I told you that we needed more people in this city who cared. Hell, you spend your weekends working in a god damn food kitchen and, while I know that your reasons are far from altruistic, still, I can't think of many people our age who'd devote their free time for the benefit of others. Well, Panacea excepted."

"It's hardly that simple," Taylor said.

"No. It's not. People are shit." Taylor practically startled at those words and Lisa was pleased that she at last had Taylor's full attention.

"Don't bother denying it," Lisa said. "I've seen the worst of what we're capable of. We're animals, when it comes down to it. The people you killed, _they_ were animals."

"It still doesn't excuse what I've done."

"No, it doesn't. But still, they were going to kill you and me, or at the very least cripple us. You heard what they said. 'Left or right,' and I'm certain I overheard you say something about them doing it before. And, between the two of us, I'm awful curious as to how you knew those details."

Taylor was silent for a moment, looking down at her closed fists. Her response was spoken quietly. "Me too."

Lisa nodded, and leaned back against the car. "Fair enough. I suppose there's a lot about your power you don't understand, and that scares you. I don't blame you for being scared. Hell, your power scares the shit out of me. That little display earlier: probably the scariest damn thing I've seen in my life. And I've seen a lot. Trust me.

"Still, doesn't change all that much. You're one of the few genuinely decent people in this city I happen to know."

Taylor was shaking her head, unwilling to believe those words, or perhaps unable to.

"You still don't trust me," Lisa said. "Even after taking us both into some alternate dimension and doing who the hell knows what…"

"It's not that," Taylor said.

"Look, I know what you're afraid of. Hell, I just saw it. It looked me in the eyes and threw me into another dimension, or universe or – fuck, I really don't know. But honestly, it's far too late for us to keep playing this game. The way things are going, you're going to break, and it's going to be ugly. Far uglier than this last display. You need to push all in eventually."

"You want me to tell you everything?"

"I want you to trust me."

Taylor was silent for a long moment. "You don't know what you're asking."

Lisa could practically taste the self loathing behind those words. She shrugged, "I'm sure you could figure out for yourself whether or not you think I can handle it. But tell me, after today, do you honestly believe you can keep shouldering this burden on your own?"

Taylor didn't reply, but she seemed lost in thought. And Lisa remained lying against her windshield, looking up into the night sky.

"Look, it's your call, but if you'd let me in, I can help you. Things certainly can't get any worse, right?"

Taylor was silent for a long moment, as Lisa let her mull things over. "I don't know how much I can tell you. I don't know if I'd even be able to. I don't understand most of it myself."

"I won't dispute that, but I'm not quite asking for a complete explanation. I've never asked for one. All I've asked if that you be honest with me, or at least someone. And I'll admit, the decision isn't one devoid of risk. Perhaps I'd freak out, take it badly, cut all ties. I can't really say, because I don't know. Still, I think I've earned the benefit of the doubt on that account. I've seen a lot of scary freakish things since we started hanging out together, but I'm still here. Even now."

"I never asked you to be," Taylor said mulishly.

"No," Lisa agreed. "But I'm still here. And I'll stay here if you'll have me."

There was another long pensive silence, as Taylor thought over Lisa's words, and Lisa waited for her to decide. She smiled slightly. At least Taylor wasn't quite so negative anymore. And she was giving her words serious thought.

Then, Lisa started hearing quiet mumbling, and she studied Taylor closely. The girl's eyes were still closed, but she was saying something to herself, so quiet she could only pick out a few words. Still, she was able to piece together the essentials of Taylor's utterances, and her smile widened.

The girl wanted to tell her, perhaps even needed to. But she didn't know how. She couldn't convey her thoughts into words, and she didn't trust Lisa to be able to understand. She watched Taylor's fists close, as her eyes began to cloud over and her mouth shift into a grimace. Lisa could feel the temperature of the Docks begin to cool once more, as Taylor's frustration began to build. Perhaps she'd pushed too far?

Shit, she had, hadn't she?

And then Taylor turned to face her, and it seemed as if something had once again snapped within her. Gone was the frazzled teenager, replaced by something else. It was staring at her, and Lisa met that inhuman gaze and quailed before it. Somehow, she just knew it was studying her. She held her breadth, and wondered whether she would be judged unworthy, and whether she'd survive if that was its decision.

The creature said no words, gave no hint to its mood or its thoughts. It just watched her with a gaze more intense, more unnerving, than anything Lisa had ever dreamed of, and it made her shiver with discomfort. She felt as if her entire life, everything that made her who she was, had been reduced to an open book which it could read at leisure. And perhaps it could. She remembered those earlier words, what Taylor had spoken to Jan, in the moment she'd snapped. How she had seemed to know so much more than was logically possible about two strangers.

She watched an amused quirk of a smile cross her observer's face and she practically cursed. It was reading her thoughts wasn't it? And then, the smile disappeared and its look became colder, even more intense and frigid than before, a look of absolute and utter concentration, and Lisa could practically feel it reaching into her mind, and even beyond that, into the core of her being.

Errant memories and thoughts flowed to her awareness, of Rex and of her family, of her life on the streets and of her first encounter with Coil, of her first impression of Taylor and of her decision to help her. She felt her own most deeply rooted feelings of self loathing spring loose within her mind, all the people she'd failed and all the people she'd used, all the horrible things she'd seen and experienced since she'd triggered. And the hope that, perhaps just this once, she could raise herself towards a higher standard.

And it was responsible. It was tearing away all her secrets and observations, cutting into the core of all that she was and all that she had seen, and putting together the puzzle that was Lisa Wilbourne. Seeing if she could be trusted, just as, Lisa had to admit, she had asked it to.

And then after an almost endless span of time, the strength of that creature's gaze diminished and she found that she could breathe again. It nodded to her wordlessly, and she could practically sense its approval. She had passed its test.

And then, Lisa found her mind inundated with knowledge, so much that at first it was disorienting, and she found at first that she couldn't make much sense of it.

She saw a young girl, a child, who was always so very alone and deeply afraid, and who spent much of her time dreaming terrible dreams about a great vastness, filled with monstrous creatures. She saw the self loathing, the utter desolation, in the child's gaze, the confusion and fear and uncertainty, and at last she was able to put a name to that child's face. Taylor Hebert.

Lisa saw unveiled before her all of Taylor's past and present. All of her own insecurities and fears. She saw her make her first friend (Emma Barnes) and begin to grow into someone happy and optimistic, and then she watched the girl's mother die and her life begin unraveling. Lisa saw a friend's betrayal and a father grow distant, lost in his own grief and insecurity. And she saw a girl get stuffed in a locker and emerge from the experience something so much more than human.

Lisa saw a teenager who was lost and utterly alone, trying desperately to keep herself afloat. And in that moment, Lisa knew just why she had been given this awful privilege. What was this creature but another facet of Taylor, or was it the reverse?

A name came to her mind, and she had a sudden impression of cosmic vastness, of some great secret no human mind could comprehend. _Yog-Sothoth_. And with that name came the vague impression of a great shimmering conglomeration of spheres, though she could not even begin to explain what it entailed.

And then the visions moved further, beyond the past and present and into the future. She saw herself spending time with Taylor, not as working acquaintances, but as genuine friends. She saw the two of them laughing as they wandered through Lord Street Market, looking very much like any random pair of teenagers, and she saw Taylor seem so much more relaxed, dare she say even happy? She saw impressions of countless scenes which had not yet happened, such as the one in the Market, and sometimes the two were alone and sometimes there weren't with them. A tall muscular black man, _Brian_, featured repeatedly in some of those visions.

And sometimes she saw the two of them wandering places which were anything but mundane. Great cities filled with wonders that defied the imagination, wonders which she could not begin to put words to. She saw great ziggurats which resembled mountains and she saw the two of them speaking with all manner of bizarre creatures, sharing news and rumor from places closed to all but the most imaginative of dreamers.

And sometimes, the visions were centered on her Tattletale persona, and she saw Brian there once more, alongside other names and faces. Rachel. Bitch. Alec. Regent. Criminals all: the gang she and Coil put together.

And she found herself moving past that, even further into the future. She saw Coil continuing to strengthen his position, drawing in parahuman mercenaries with the promise of his assistance, beginning to strike more openly at the established gangs, though always careful not to overreach. And she saw herself remain his tool, valued but disposable, just as so many of his associations tended to be.

Then, it showed her one final scene, and that was the most chilling of all. She heard the sound of a great siren echo through a tremendous gale, and she saw a vague silhouette of something awful rising from amidst the waves – Leviathan, and she felt a grim realization settle over her that something infinitely worse would somehow follow in its wake.

And then that presence pulled away from her mind, and it took the memories with it, leaving only the vaguest of impressions.

Lisa lay against her windshield, feeling suddenly exhausted, and deeply frustrated. She stubbornly tried to recall what it was she had seen and learned, but found all her efforts were for naught. It just wasn't fair. Why show her something, and then take it all away?

God, what the hell had happened to her? What had she seen? What had she learned? If only she could remember, because she knew it was important, that it would somehow affect everything. There was a name, one which lay just out of reach, but if she could just recall it she was certain that she would understand so much more. And wasn't that strange: as if a name could carry with it such importance.

She shook her head, tried to clear her mind and calm down. She could drive herself crazy with these kinds of thoughts. Perhaps it would be best if they just got out of this hell hole.

"Taylor," she said and the girl looked up at her, but something had changed within her expression, it was no longer so closed off and guarded. Lisa watched her for a moment, and she found some of her frustrations diminished as she discerned what had changed. Finally, after all this time, Taylor was willing to let her in. To trust her.

The two of them had shared something vast and profound, and even if neither of them could recall any of it, that experience had still left its mark. But still, Lisa had to know.

"Please tell me you remembered that?"

Taylor startled at the question, momentarily confused, and then her eyes seemed to light up with understanding, before she smiled sadly and shook her head.

"Sorry Tattles," she said and stopped, looking at Lisa quizzically and Lisa couldn't help herself. She started laughing, almost hysterically so.

For a moment, Taylor was puzzled, but it passed and she merely shook her head with a fond amusement that hadn't been there before, and let out a somber sigh. "Strange night, wasn't it?"

Lisa brought herself under control and nodded. "You can say that again. Are you feeling better, though?"

The younger girl was silent for a long time, thinking over the question. And then she shrugged, "Probably not all that much. It's been a horrible day."

Lisa frowned but nodded, "Fair enough. Ready to get out of here though?"

"Please."

They got into the car and drove away. Neither spoke a word.


	7. Interlude: Coil

Interlude: Coil

He was a tall man, thin as a skeleton, and he was seated in front of a computer, typing away. Covering the rear wall, behind the desk he sat at, was a map of the city of Brockton Bay heavily annotated by a precise handwritten script. Marked out on that map were known movements of the Empire 88 and the ABB, recent hotspots in the intermittent gang wars which ravaged the city, safe houses and distribution centers – all the danger zones which he would avoid, and all the weak points which he could exploit.

The room he was in was virtually silent, save for the constant click-clacking of the keyboard. That quiet was broken by the abrupt ringing of a cell phone. He stopped his work and picked it up.

"Coil," the skeletal man said. He remained silent, pensive, and beneath his mask, Thomas Calvert was frowning. "You're certain?"

There was another pause before the crime boss nodded once again. "I'll look into this. Well done. Keep watching her though. See if you can learn anything else. Call me if you find anything new."

Coil turned off his cell and returned to his computer. He clicked on a hidden folder, bringing up hundreds of other files, each one encrypted and password protected.

He clicked on the one entitled Lisa Wilbourn, and a photograph of a freckled teenager materialized on his computer screen. It was followed by several dozen pages: her entire life's history down to the most minute detail.

She could be a tricky one, he had to admit: someone who required careful management. True, as an asset she was valuable, but she was proud, rebellious, and she didn't take losing particularly well – she'd stab him in the back if he gave her a moment's opportunity. He didn't blame her on that account: in all fairness, were their roles reversed, he'd have done much the same.

Still, he needed to know what she was up to, and so Coil split the timeline. In one universe, he spent his time typing away, taking notes, answering calls, giving orders and gathering intelligence. In the streets beyond these walls, the Empire 88 and the ABB remained embroiled in their cold war, while lesser gangs danced about the edges, fighting over scraps. At some point in the near future, he'd need to do something about that, find a way to ensure that those cold embers sparked into a blaze, but not this day. It wasn't yet time for that.

In the other, in a world which he didn't know existed only in his head, he made a single call.

"Find Tattletale," he said. "Bring her here. Now. Escorted if you'd please."

With the order given, he proceeded to wait, as he looked over more intelligence, doing twice the work he would have otherwise been capable of, and occasionally he would pause, check the reading of his computer's digital clock, waiting for his wayward associate to arrive. An email arrived on his computer and beneath his mask, he smiled as he read it. They were due for arrival.

In the real world, Coil stopped, picked up his phone and called a number, waited as it rang three times.

He heard Lisa's smug voice come on the other end, "Boss."

"Lisa," he said, while in the world that wasn't, an armored van pulled in, and he ordered that the same girl be brought to him. "I do wonder when you were going to tell me about your little, what should we call it, Samaritan streak?"

"Sir?"

"You should have known I'd find out eventually. I always do, and I'm curious to know, just what are you up to? You've never been invested in civic outreaches before. I suppose congratulations are in order, Tattletale."

He could sense her trepidation on the other line, and it gave him some amusement to hold that power over her. She could get so insufferable sometimes.

"Look boss, it's really nothing. I promise, it's got nothing to do with the cape game."

"Sarah," he said. "Look at things from my perspective. You're a valued asset, and you must remember that you have certain duties you should be attending to. The Undersiders, if I recall, yes? I don't think some explanation concerning your recent activities is too much is too much to ask for, do you?"

He could taste the fear. "No. No sir."

He paused, and his next words were ice cold. "Sarah. Why?"

Her words came tumbling out, "Look, trust me. It doesn't have anything to do with you, okay? She's just a sideshow, someone I found in trouble. She reminds me of – well, I know you're aware of my background. Where I come from, why I ran. She brought back bad memories, and I felt like, for once, I had to do something. It's not the kind of thing you need to bother yourself about. It has nothing to do with us. Nothing to do with parahumans at all."

Coil paused, as in the other timeline, Tattletale was dragged before him by two armed mercenaries, a look mixing fear and hatred on her face. In the real world, Coil put on a show of false amiability. He'd gotten his point across – that he was watching and wouldn't be so easily fooled. It wouldn't do to push her too hard. Not yet at least.

"No need to get so panicked, Lisa. I suppose I can grant you the benefit of the doubt for now. Let's talk business then, yes?"

He could feel her relief, as they began speaking about the Undersiders. In the simulation, the one that he would soon discard, the atmosphere was a much more stifling one. There, Tattletale was held in place by the two mercenaries, her head rapidly turning to and fro as she hyperventilated.

She looked very much like a trapped animal.

"You don't have to do this," she said, for once dropping the bravado entirely. "I've been loyal. I've done good work for you."

"Yes, you have." Coil said, "And for what little it's worth, I'm sorry that it had to come to this. Cooperate, and it won't hurt. I just have a few questions I'd like you to answer."

Nervously, she nodded, and they got started. In the true reality, their conversation turned towards relaxed, perhaps even amiable, channels. In the false one, it was anything but.

After thirty minutes of brutal interrogation, he determined that he had enough information for the time being. "Thank you for your cooperation."

He closed the timeline, and loaded up a new word document on his computer. At the moment, it comprised only of only two words. _Taylor Hebert_.

He intended to add more.

L

L

What he learned was troubling.

For one thing, much as Tattletale may have tried to imply otherwise, Taylor Hebert was a parahuman. Tattletale may have fancied herself a decent enough liar, but she had her tells, especially when under duress. Unfortunately, Lisa hadn't known what those powers entailed – although she suspected the girl was extremely powerful. That much she was clear about.

She was a mystery, and in the weeks that followed his chat with Tattletale, Coil endeavored to solve it.

By all accounts, she was a normal High School student, fifteen years old, described by her teachers as aloof, highly introverted – possibly a troubled child. Unlike most parahumans, she had no alter-ego: she wasn't a hero or a villain or even a rogue. She went to school, she spent most of her free time at her house with her father (Daniel Hebert of the Dockworkers' Association – he made a note on that, signifying the man as a potential resource for leverage or coercion) or at that Food Shelter of theirs.

In early January, she had been stuffed into a locker filled with used hygienic products and left there for hours. That was likely when she triggered, and in the end of that same month he had, by happenstance, discovered her. Sometimes, he honestly believed he would have been happier in ignorance. He would have certainly slept better, not knowing what her power did.

He found out something troubling during the second week of that February, when he decided it was time he acquired something more substantial on the young girl's power set. He set a trap for her, sent mercenaries to her home, to abduct the father somewhere secure and then wait for the young Miss Hebert to arrive. The first stage of the plan was carried out admirably, and at quarter after three in the afternoon he received a call that they were on route, with the girl in tow.

In both the real world and the one which was, in truth, no more than a simulation, he waited for what seemed an interminable span of time for the armored car to return. Then, he observed the knob turn and the door swing open, and as he caught sight of the girl flanked by two agents, he felt the first inklings of a terrible migraine, and his eyes widened in surprise at what he saw.

"Sir, we brought her in," one of the mercenaries said, pushing her forwards, stumbling, into the room. But there was something off about her – Taylor Hebert appeared strangely translucent, like a ghost, or like something out of an undeveloped photograph. Looking at her felt like staring into the sun, and he found his migraines increased with each second that she was in his presence.

"Sir, is everything all right?" the guard asked.

"You don't notice anything off about the girl?" Coil asked.

"No sir, she's just some normal kid."

That was perhaps the most troubling thing of all. He turned back to look at the girl, watching as she faded in and out of his vision, and as he tried to make some sense of her, his pain increased into something excruciating, and the simulation itself began to warp. He tried to speak but found his voice distorting, and his words came out indecipherable. He watched one of his mercenaries start to speak but no words came out, only similar distortions.

The entire room, and everyone in it, began to lose color, became something mottled and grey, before it all faded into black and the simulation aborted, leaving only the real Coil, sitting alone in his command center.

It was an hour before he could even summon the energy to move from his desk.

Later that week, he tried a second experiment, to ascertain whether somehow she naturally foiled his abilities, or whether that previous experience had been some form of direct attack. This time, there would be no threats, no attacks – just a harmless, by all appearances, random encounter during one of her weekly excursions in the docks.

He waited at her usual bus stop, reading a newspaper, and as she stepped off the bus, she showed no sign of recognizing him, but that headache returned all the same, and the world came apart just as rapidly as it had the first time.

The implications were clear, and a later conversation with Lisa, one only he had any awareness of, confirmed the hypothesis: somehow, proximity to Taylor Hebert destabilized his power. Unfortunately, Lisa was also convinced that there was much more to Taylor's abilities than met the eye – that she was immensely powerful in ways that neither of them yet knew.

In short, Taylor Hebert was a wildcard. Coil hated wildcards.

Had she simply been a Thinker, Coil might have assassinated her. She was too dangerous to be left running unchecked, but the fact remained – he had no knowledge of the girl and if he underestimated her, if her abilities were in any way as potent as Lisa suspected, such an attempt could prove fatal. So he couldn't move against her – but he could still keep her under surveillance.

Fortunately, the situation wasn't quite the catastrophe it could have been. Aside from her associations with Lisa Wilbourn, Taylor had no connection to the city's cape community. She preferred a strictly civilian existence, and that was something he could easily live with. Something he was inclined to encourage. So for the time being, like the snakes he patterned himself upon, Coil was prepared to wait.

This didn't mean he couldn't set up contingencies in the meantime.

One late February morning, Coil picked up his phone and called a number. He was speeding up his timetable a bit, but it was the least unpalatable option available. He had a feeling that the status quo wouldn't last much longer in any case.

"Yes, is this Trickster?" A pause. "I have a proposition for you."

L

L

On the twentieth of March, reeling from the effects of a particularly vivid dream, Lisa Wilbourn woke up with graphic memories of several conversations that had never happened, and which she wished she could forget.


	8. Chapter 5

Happy Halloween.

Chapter 5

Lisa had difficulty sleeping that night. She tossed and turned, as the sound of whistling echoed in her ears. She could still see the amorphous tentacles reaching out and grasping, just as she could still see Taylor, inhuman and horrifying and not at all like the young girl she'd come to know. She pulled herself up, hugging her pillow to her stomach, got up out of bed and drank a glass of water, trying to calm down.

The clock on the wall tick tocked its way towards midnight. She shook her head, for a moment regretting that she had ever deigned to meet with Taylor Hebert in the first place. What the hell had she been thinking, when her power had so adamantly insisted that she run the other way?

Lisa heaved a sigh. She had a long day coming up – meetings with Coil, meetings with the Undersiders. Her boss was starting to get impatient – they'd been digging their heels, too content with small prizes. This past week, he'd been implying they might do something more dramatic, perhaps against the ABB, and pretty soon she expected he'd become insistent. But she really didn't want to tangle with Lung. Thankfully, Lisa doubted she'd get much disagreement from the others on that account.

She had briefly considered approaching Taylor with an offer. That was before she saw Taylor's power, whatever the hell that happened to be, in action. Before she was introduced to the _things_ that were at Taylor's beck and call.

Nope. She wasn't going to be touching that with a ten foot pole. Taylor had enough issues as it was – put a criminal record in front of her and she just might snap. Maybe if things became too hopeless, between Lung and Coil, and she needed to find a way out…

A singular image came to mind, of an inhumanly tall girl with a serene grin and an apathetic gaze, watching uncaring as a gangster was pulled into the darkness. That vision was joined by a vague impression of something vaster than she could imagine. Yeah, some ideas were just terrible all around.

Lisa exhaled and sat back down in her bed, holding her head in her hands. Okay, she'd bitten off more than she could chew. She could admit that. Not for the first time, she found herself missing her time on the street, before the Undersiders and Coil and Taylor. Terrible as the worst of those days had been, she had to admit: things were very much simpler then.

She looked up at the ticking clock, whose hands were now aligned at midnight and got back in bed. It wasn't easy, but eventually she fell asleep. And she dreamed.

L

L

At first, Lisa saw only nothingness – an abyss, an endless blackness she couldn't comprehend. Every once in a while, she would hear a terrible crashing sound, something which could almost have resembled thunder, except it was far more jarring and powerful than anything even the greatest of storms could produce. And in those moments, there would be flashes of _something_, of a blinding white light which would illuminate the darkness, revealing thin cracks running through the vast emptiness before her, minute fractures suspended in space. They were everywhere and, with each crash of sound and each corresponding flash of light, she observed those cleavages growing ever larger and more numerous.

She was dreaming, she knew that, and yet, somehow, she suspected that it was more than a normal dream. She felt as if she was standing upon the precipice of something profound, which she just couldn't quite grasp. There was another blast of sound, corresponding with another flash of light, and in that instant, almost as if by chance, her eyes caught a second shape standing vigil in the darkness, a shadow in the vague outline of a human being, and a familiar one at that.

"Taylor?" she asked.

The figure made no response. Another rumbling in the distance, another flash of light which pierced that vast emptiness, and Taylor was now in front of her, no longer a vague shadow but the human being she knew, looking just as she had when they had first met: the same long dark hair and dark eyes and geeky glasses. She was facing Lisa but looking past her, all of her attention riveted upon some distant visage. Her mouth was agape and there were tears falling from her eyes. Lisa couldn't be sure whether her expression spoke so much of terror, grief, or stunned awe. Perhaps it was a combination of all three.

"Taylor," she started to say but all faded into blackness once more, and with the next brief illumination, her friend was gone, and Lisa was alone once more. She shook her head and pulled herself into a crouch, looking about that vast nothingness, trying to make some sense of what she was seeing, but finding it impossible.

"Seriously, what the fuck?" she yelled into the darkness, but the abyss gave no answers. With the blinking of her eyes, everything changed. It was a moment that felt like an eternity, in which she was dragged forwards some endless distance, and when her eyes opened again, Lisa found herself no longer ensconced in darkness, but somewhere else entirely.

Her mouth hung open, for now she stood at the base of a great ziggurat, tall as a skyscraper and wider than it was tall, constructed of great sandstone blocks, too many to count. Idly, she circled the monolith, finding no threshold, but her practiced eyes did catch several narrow staircases which had been carved into those stone, which carried their way upwards towards the summit. And every time she caught sight of one of those stairways, she she found herself fighting back a vague compulsion to start climbing.

That ziggurat was the only sign of habitation, and all around her towards the horizons stretched an endless desert. But it wasn't stiflingly hot, as deserts tend to be. In fact, the sand felt rather cool beneath her toes, and strangely humid. And the air smelled and tasted of salt.

"Weirdest damn desert I've ever seen," she told herself, sitting stubbornly upon the sands, whimsically looking for seabirds that would never come.

"Such is the way of dreams," a second voice sounded from behind her. "As I'm sure you must be aware."

Lisa pulled herself back to her feet and turned to face a tall woman, well over six feet, pale skinned and dark haired. She wore white robes and a white hood and, aside from her face, only her hands were left bare.

Lisa watched this newcomer warily. "I hate to admit it, but this isn't like any dream I've ever had before."

The woman bowed her head in greeting. A small smile formed on lips the color of blood. "Indeed, you are new to the Dreamlands then."

In a single step, the woman had crossed the distance between them, and stood inches from Lisa herself. She reached out with her index finger, placing it upon Lisa's forehead. "An interesting mind you have, Lisa who was once named Sarah."

Lisa's body language closed off even further than it had been before, as she felt more and more like a rat caught in a trap, looking for a means to escape but finding no way out. "Who – no, what are you?"

"I'm not a figment of your imagination, if that's what you're asking. You and I, we've moved past such limitations. This is a realm open only to a few, and this is your first passing into these places. For all of that, you have… a Connection."

She pulled back, as if burned, and Lisa saw a momentary glimpse of fear cross the woman's face. The Robed One recovered quickly enough, her face again an expressionless mask. "You are an interesting one, Lisa who was once named Sarah, to have caught the attention of Something like That."

"Taylor," Lisa said.

"Yes," the woman answered. "I suppose that is what It's calling itself, or at least one fragment of the Greater Whole."

Lisa crossed her arms stubbornly, "You still haven't answered my question. Since you know so much about me…"

"Yes, my name," the woman said, a smug smile on her face. "But I have so many, in different times and different places and, trust me this, there are some questions you are better off not asking, some answers you'd rather not know. You may as well call me the Oracle, for you have stumbled upon my Temple, for answers have you not?"

Lisa backed away, hands up, her head turning side to side seeking out some kind of an escape but finding none. "Look, I really never meant any of this…"

The woman darted forwards, leaning down to eye level. "Oh, but you have. Whether conscious or not, you seek knowledge. And instinct dragged you to a place you knew would provide, and you were fortunate as well, for there are other purveyors or truth that exact a far higher toll for their gifts than I. In any case, I suppose it would be remiss of me not to reward your search for truth with a truth of my own, for are we not both seekers of knowledge, Lisa who was once named Sarah?"

Lisa frowned, "How can I trust you? You talk in circles, but there's no substance."

"Accusations of sophistry?" The woman smiled chillingly. "You are a bold one, to come into my domain and wager such claims. Still, I will forgive such transgressions for the time being. I can be merciful, when it serves my purpose, and I can see that you have a role to play far beyond my power to thwart."

Lisa was silent for a moment, as she watched the so called Oracle wait silently before her. Could she trust her? Did it even matter whether she could or not? If the woman wish to kill her, Lisa had a fairly strong suspicion she'd be dead. Unless there was some vague ritual underlining her behavior – something untold. A blood price of sorts?

There wasn't enough information, and the pale woman was impossible to get a read on. This entire place, the Dreamlands as she called it, was an impossibility. Unbidden, a memory came to mind, and the woman backed away as if stung and her expression darkened. As if summoned by a distant memory, the image of Taylor stood upon the sands, vaguely apathetic, stretching out, growing taller and taller, and the sky itself began to warp and fold in upon itself, as tears were opened in the spaces around them, providing vistas into other worlds and other times.

"ENOUGH!" The Oracle yelled, and the vision dissolved and the desert returned to normal. She turned her gaze back at Lisa. "A dangerous ploy, even if it was born more from ignorance than malice. Reality is fluid in these places, and it can be harnessed if you have the will. But to invoke the memory of _That_ is a particularly foolish error. You risk drawing Its awareness upon us."

Lisa watched the so called Oracle, studying her, and she smiled. "You're afraid."

"Yes," the Oracle said. "Anyone with good sense would be. So should you."

"She's my friend."

"Yes, you are under Its protection, for the time being at the very least. But that protection will not last long, and I promise that your friend is a far more terrifying foe than I."

Lisa, as much as she hated it, could not disagree there. But still, she had something to go with. She only hoped that she wasn't making some terrible mistake. "What is she?"

The woman smiled, "So you play my game at last." She clapped her hands together, excitedly. "Alas, that is a question the answer to which you already know, even if you are not yet aware."

"Bullshit."

"You know Its Name, it showed you that when you encountered one another, when your minds briefly became one, back in the waking world. And you've seen a glimpse into Higher Planes on your journey here. Before you hit the Dreamlands…"

"The void," Lisa said.

"Yes," the woman agreed. "But those who ask questions must be careful what costs those answers will sew. Some truths will burn your mind and make it ash."

Lisa leaned against the Temple's foundation stones. "You haven't been much help, you know that?"

"I am not here for your amusement," the Oracle said as unperturbed as ever. "In any case, you've been asking the wrong question."

"And what is the right one?"

"How do I help my friend?"

Lisa glared at her and parroted back the query.

"I am afraid our time draws short," the Oracle said, taking a step back and, with that step, she disappeared altogether. Still, her voice lingered in the air, and reverberated from all directions. "And you would know this Taylor Hebert better than I. So I pose you a question, Lisa Wilbourne. What is the burden that weighs so heavily upon her shoulders? The answer to that should make things obvious."

Lisa frowned, disappointment and contempt warring on her face. The answer was an obvious one. "She's afraid of losing herself. Losing touch with her humanity, becoming something monstrous."

"Exactly!" The phantom voice exclaimed on the wind, but now it was terribly excited. "But what does it mean to be human? And can Taylor Hebert any longer claim the right to such fantasies?"

Lisa's eyes were stormy and her hands were clenched tightly. She stood in the empty desert, and a single thought etched its way into her mind, born out of defiance. _Yes. She does_.

Malignant laughter echoed in the winds and Lisa caught a brief image in her mind's eye of the Oracle once more, though it was no longer the woman she had seen but something far more terrible, neither male nor female but something else entirely.

She could see it reaching out towards her, and she felt its phantom touch upon her forehead. In a thousand voices, it seemed to speak. "So arrogant, but so ignorant about so many things."

Lisa spurred awake, hyperventilating, blinking in pain as dozens of memories assaulted her senses, of her meeting with Coil, conversing with him. Being interrogated, tortured, and killed. Conversations that never happened, that couldn't have happened, yet she knew had been all too real.

She always knew she meant little to him, but to see it laid out like this...

She climbed out of the bed and fetched a glass of water, filling it. Her mind flashed back at the Oracle, or whatever it was that had been pretending to be an Oracle.

"Fuck you," she said. She could swear she still heard the echoes of malignant laughter.


	9. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Lisa would be lying if she were to say that, when she woke up that Sunday morning, she was in the most stable of moods. Her mind flashed continuously back to the previous night's horrors, and the contents of that dream along with the revelation which followed. She found it a struggle to just pull herself out of bed.

When she closed her eyes, she could still see the woman in white watching and judging, smug and self assured. And worse still were the interrogations, spread out across all the months she'd been under Coil's employ. Sessions to find out whether she had any ambitions of her own, whether she was running any additional projects he didn't know about and, most recently, the ones concerning Taylor Hebert. And sometimes she was tortured and sometimes she was summarily executed and although she had always known just what her boss was truly capable of, this was so much worse because there was a vast difference between knowing something intellectually, and actually experiencing it over and over again.

She would have been lying if she didn't say that some small part of her was strongly tempted to try to throw Taylor and Coil at one another, and then get the hell out of Dodge. Cut ties and run. Hell, she'd done it before, and her life couldn't get any more screwed up than it already was, but in that moment an image played in her mind: of her brother's corpse, of the funeral and the false smiles and the crocodile tears, and of Taylor, the young girl who was in, her own way, in an even worse position than Lisa herself.

And therein lay the million dollar question. What the hell was Taylor Hebert? Because she certainly wasn't any ordinary parahuman, and Lisa had her doubts that the girl was even a parahuman at all.

And then there was Coil, who had resources, an organization, money, and what did she have? Her power (which Coil knew inside and out), her team which, unless she played things absolutely perfectly (and even then she'd be playing tough odds), would, should push ever come to shove, probably end up siding with her boss in any case, and Taylor who, as Capes went, was beginning to appear more and more like the Nuclear Option.

"Fuck my life," Lisa whined, lying back in the bed, wanting nothing more than to play the metaphorical Ostrich: bury her head in the ground until all her troubles went away. Unfortunately, Coil would never let her out that easily and Taylor – well, the less said about Taylor the better.

She just had to play the Good Samaritan, didn't she?

Lisa shook her head and checked the clock. There was still time before her shift, and she figured that she'd need to get her act together by then. She had no doubts that Coil had her continuously under watch, and she really didn't want to arouse his suspicions. If he were to pull one of his interrogations now, learn what she had seen the previous night, and decide that Taylor was too unstable, too large a threat to leave unchecked…

There was a line of thought she really didn't want to go down. In her mind's eye, she had a sudden flash of that Nightmare Place, and of Brockton Bay, now a menagerie of horrors where the skies were cracked through with rips in space and time, from which vast and amorphous and terrible creatures sprang forth en masse. She hoped that image had been nothing more than her imagination running away with her, but somehow Lisa couldn't shake the uneasy suspicion that something far more ominous was at work than her overstressed mind.

Stubbornly, she shook her head and, still disturbed and very much distressed, proceeded to get dressed for the morning.

L

L

Lisa may have been on edge, with her entire world falling to pieces all around her, but no one interacting with her that morning could have known it. She showed up at work that morning, right on time, bright and chipper. She greeted her fellow volunteers and even her dour supervisor, and then she waited outside for Taylor to show. Just as she did every morning.

This time, however, Taylor never did arrive. Lisa frowned – it seemed that she wasn't the only one taking the previous night's events harshly. And she didn't blame the younger girl for that, considering what she had done to those two ABB hoodlums. Lisa remembered just how broken the girl had looked in the aftermath, her eyes big and watery, her mind awash in confusion and despair. And now she hadn't come into work, choosing instead to stay at home.

Lisa shook her head – that was a bit of an assumption, really. For all she knew, Taylor could have ran off and tried to skip town, isolate herself from the world around her, but she had difficulty seeing Taylor take so extreme a route. She had too few connections to the world as it was, and Lisa doubted that the younger girl would willingly sever them.

Unfortunately, she really couldn't trust Taylor to act reasonably in her current state, now could she? Lisa checked her watch one last time, pulled out her cell phone, dialed Taylor's home number, and got an answering machine.

Lisa's lips pulled into a grimace, and she turned back and strode into the back rooms, for a private chat with the Supervisor.

The older woman barely had a chance to get a word in edge wise when Lisa cut her off, sounding as cocky and self assured as ever.

"Sharon," the teenager greeted. "We need to talk."

She was taking an early break.

L

L

Needless to say, Lisa got her way, as often tended to happen. True, Sharon could be a stubborn and intimidating woman, tough as nails in some respects, and she tended to scare most of the volunteers out of their wits, but Lisa was a teenage Supervillain damn it, and a Thinker at that. There would have been something wrong if she couldn't manage to browbeat a civilian every once in a while.

She drove down to Taylor's house, parallel parking beside the Hebert's driveway, and then she leisurely made her way to the front door, which was inconveniently locked.

That didn't stop Lisa for any more than a minute or two, and then it was time for a more personal intervention. Lisa showed every sign of blasé self assurance, but deep within the privacy of her innermost thoughts, she was terrified by the thought that she was about to piss off something vast and powerful and terribly unstable.

Without even knocking, she threw open the door to Taylor's bedroom and called out, "Rise and shine sleepy head!"

"Lisa?" Taylor startled, still in bed, still in pajamas. Her face was wane and there were already shadows developing around her eyes.

"Yep," Lisa said, crossing her arms. "When you didn't show up today, I figured you weren't taking things well. Last night was rather eventful, am I right?"

Taylor made no response, and Lisa strode forwards, taking a seat on the foot of the bed and turned to face the younger girl. "Good thing I did too, because, seriously, you look like a wreck at the moment. Bad dreams?"

Taylor's voice was quiet, but Lisa could hear the words regardless. "I kept seeing their faces. Over and over again."

"They were going to kill us," Lisa pointed out, her tone neutral.

"That doesn't make it right. Lisa, I – I don't even know what I did. All this time, I thought I was getting better. It was slow going, yes, but I thought I was making progress. And now I find out I'm just another monster."

Lisa frowned, thinking back to the Woman in White, and to Coil. Words from a recent dream replayed themselves in the recesses of her mind. _What does it mean to be human? And can Taylor Hebert any longer claim the right to such fantasies?_

"You're not," she said.

"What?" Taylor croaked brokenly.

"A monster," Lisa said, but she could already see the other girl drawing back into herself, cocooning herself in self loathing and despair. "Listen to me, I know monsters. I've met them, and I won't deny, you can be pretty damn freaky and terrifying when you want to be. Hell, I was there last night, if you'll remember. So, yeah, I know full well what you're capable of, and I have a pretty good idea of what you're fighting. You feel like your drowning, in whatever kind of existence you're skirting on, right?"

"And what would you know about it?" Taylor asked, refusing to so much as look at Lisa. Too ashamed, at what she had done and what she was becoming.

Lisa bit back a sharp retort, as her mind flashed back to her sessions with Coil, and to her burgeoning friendship with the young girl beside her. "More than you'd think, actually. You know, it's pretty conceited to believe you hold the monopoly on shit hands in life. You have people who'd go out of their way to support you, your father and I among them, willing to give you guidance, which is a hell of a lot more than what many are given."

"You make it sound easy," Taylor voiced bitterly. "No big deal that I just destroyed people, and that some part of me felt nothing for it, and I'm still not certain that I feel at all guilty. They looked so very small as they stood there cowering, like insects, and even now as I look back on them, some part of me still feels they looked like insects. How fucked up is that? Hell, you should be terrified of me, wondering when I'll snap…"

"I am," Lisa interrupted, and that got the girl's attention. "I won't lie. You scare the crap out of me sometimes, especially when you start talking about how very small and insignificant we mere humans are. Give me some credit, I'm not stupid."

"And yet you come here?"

Lisa shrugged, "I suppose I'm not quite as smart as I'd like to think I am?"

Taylor shook her head, and some of the tension dropped from her shoulders though looking at her still brought to Lisa's mind the impression of a kicked puppy. "I guess I'm glad you came. But I just feel so lost…"

"Well, what you were intending on doing – wallowing the day away in misery, it's not healthy and it's not going to do you any good at all."

Taylor frowned and turned to look Lisa in the eye and there was a tired desperation in her expression, "I know all that, but it doesn't change a damn thing. Lisa, what am I supposed to do?"

Lisa got up off the bed and walked off, started shuffling through Taylor's things. She heard a hesitant voice sound out from behind her. "What are you doing?"

Lisa grabbed a change of clothing, throwing it all at Taylor's head. "Put some clothes on. We're going out for the day, just the two of us."

She turned back to Taylor, grinning. "It'll be fun. Now get dressed."

Taylor muttered something undoubtedly rude under her breadth, clearly none too enthused with the directive, but she acquiesced nonetheless. Lisa's smile turned wider as she exited the room and closed the door shut behind her. Who'd have thought? Lisa Wilbourn, AKA Tattletale, had just managed to bully the reality warping horror through sheer force of personality. Perhaps it didn't suck so much being her after all.


	10. Chapter 7

A/N: Double Update.

Chapter 7

They drove down to the Market. Taylor silently sat shotgun, and Lisa would sometimes try to make pithy conversation to distract her from whatever thoughts continued to plague her. She failed.

The previous night, Taylor had dreamed, and it was a familiar one. She dreamed herself as something else, something cold and arrogant and detached, to whom all those uncountable human beings of this world and every other world might as well have been but insects. Insignificant and barely worth noticing.

And in that dream, Taylor Hebert would look upon her waking self and feel pity and some semblance of annoyance – she was such a lost creature, fighting against the inevitable. And then she awakened and the dream faded and she felt diminished. She felt as if, for one brief moment in time, she had contained an entire universe in her head, and now it was gone, and what did that make her?

Taylor thought back towards that previous night, towards the people she killed and the horrors she unleashed, and she didn't know what was worse: the fact that she had been responsible for that deed, or the fact that, to a large degree, she suspected that she only felt the guilt because she felt it an appropriate response.

She closed her eyes and summoned up the image in her mind, and once again Jan and Yan (in different times and different places) stood stark in her memory, their faces pale and eyes bulging, every feature of their bodies etched in some parody of terror, while Lisa backed away in fear, as all of creation came undone, and her _pets_ began to draw close. Some part of her remained shaken by the experience, but there was another part of her, and it wasn't a small subset either, which felt nothing for it at all, save perhaps a vague sense of satisfaction, and she could hear that second voice in the back of her head, that second aspect of herself, whispering about how much easier it would be if she would just submit, and about how all her struggles would make no difference in the long run. That this was what she was supposed to be.

The worst thing of all was that, even though she desperately wished she didn't, Taylor agreed.

She looked out the car window, out at Brockton Bay, and for a brief moment the city faded away around her, as did the car and Lisa, and she was alone in a vast nothingness – where space and time and mathematics and proportion twisted and rippled all around her and she felt as if she was swimming in it. And slowly, she could begin to hear the swell of some strange song, so quiet that if she could only just…

"Taylor," Lisa's voice emanated from somewhere so very distant and so very near, and in that moment the girl who was not a girl crashed back into herself, and there was just Taylor, and Lisa, together in a parked car. "We're here."

Taylor nodded, but gave no response. The two stepped out of the car and headed off towards the market stalls.

"Try not to get too lost in your thoughts," Lisa advised, uncharacteristically solemn, though Taylor didn't blame her for that. Not after what they had both seen the night before. The things that Taylor had done.

"Well, come on," Lisa insisted with false cheer. "We've got things to do and all that."

Wordlessly, Taylor followed.

L

L

They spent that afternoon wandering through the stalls. It was still cold, and there were threatening clouds in the skies above, so the market wasn't quite as trafficked as it tended to get during the summer months, when the tourists converged. But they wandered along the rows of stalls, more than a few of which were empty, and Lisa eavesdropped on countless private conversations, a smug grin on her face as she set to work solving all those puzzles. And occasionally, she'd speak to Taylor, try to draw her just a little bit out of her shell, sharing some of the juicier stories her power was unable to uncover, but Taylor remained subdued, lost somewhere in her own head.

Needless to say, Taylor didn't have the heart for such gossip and, if she was honest with herself, neither did Lisa. In the end they returned to the car and drove back the way they came.

L

L

The next day, Lisa's phone rang.

"Lisa," she heard Coil's voice on the other end. "I think it's time the Undersiders made a mark on Brockton Bay, don't you agree?"

She gritted her teeth, hearing the unspoken threat in his voice, and the memories of past sessions, of torture and cruelty and even of her death, slammed into her. She flinched in spite of herself, as something within herself seethed and raged. "You're aware that my team – we're not exactly combat oriented."

"You've said that before."

"Because it's still true," Lisa said mulishly. "If this is about your suggestion that we attack the ABB…"

"Forget about the ABB for a moment," Coil said, and those words gave her pause. "Perhaps it's time we shift the focus, throw you against a target the PRT can't so easily ignore."

There was a silent pause on the other end, and then Coil continued, "In any case, I'm inclined to think you underestimate your team's capabilities. Rachel and Brian have powers that can be useful enough in a fight, and I'm sure Alec's can provide some useful tactical versatility as well."

She frowned, her power not needing to tell her that there was something more he wasn't saying. Coil was playing at something.

"You're overestimating them and you know it. Could we best a crowd of civilians? Sure, perhaps even hold our own against one of the minor gangs, but we wouldn't last a minute against any of the powerhouses. Or the Wards."

There was a pause on the other end, "I'm prepared to loan you some additional manpower, if it proves necessary."

She paused and her earlier suspicions redoubled. That was quite the concession, which meant her boss had something big in mind.

"Have a workable plan before the end of the week. Before your next rendezvous with Hebert."

"That's an awful lot of latitude," she said.

His reply came back clipped. "Yes. It is."

Coil hung up. Lisa cursed.

L

L

The following days jumbled together in a mad rush of planning and meetings. There was managing the Undersiders, managing Coil (hah!), looking into potential targets and weak spots. The Brockton Bay Central Bank stood as a very promising target and, if nothing else, it would promise an influx in cash (which at the very least, Regent and Bitch could get behind, and Grue as well given enough time).

But still, there was so very much which could go wrong, and when she met Coil's 'help,' her worries doubled.

The Travelers were parahuman mercenaries and, whatever it was he had offered them (and didn't she know there was something more than just money involved), they were Coil's through and through. There was an air of desperation, a wild need which tied them to his banner. Not the sort of people she could count on to back her in her own eventual rebellion, but there were fissions there – long boiling tensions which, if necessary, she could someday exploit. But for now, they could provide much needed firepower, assuming Coil got his way. And she had no illusions that he wouldn't.

And wasn't that the biggest variable of all? Coil. He was getting anxious. She could see it in their face to face meetings. Perhaps even afraid, of Taylor she had no doubt, and she wondered (not for the first time) whether the two had had any more recent interrogations stored away in some forgotten reality. Whether he'd found out about Taylor's trick in the alley, and was speeding up his plans accordingly. Lisa bit back a sigh. Her life was a fucking circus.

She spoke with Coil again that Friday. She discussed the bank, and her tentative plans surrounding it: about security routines, reaction times, its location in proximity with the Wards and the Protectorate, and her confidence that her team could get in and get out quickly, successful, especially if she had the additional muscle of the Travelers backing her up, and about her concerns should the Protectorate make a timely response.

Coil listened as she spoke, giving no tells or hints as to what thoughts streamed through his mind. He was steely, and all of his focus and intent was drawn upon what she was saying. She finished, and stood before him, and some masochistic part of her subconscious began wondering if the bastard was having some separate conversation with her right now, towering over her as his armed goons flanked her, and perhaps she was being held at gunpoint or perhaps there were drugs or perhaps…

His words cut through her dark daydream, "The Brockton Bay Central Bank? Yes, I suppose that could be workable. Are you certain you can get your entire team on board with that plan?"

Lisa shrugged, "I suppose Grue would be the hardest sell. You can't deny that it's risky, and he has a sister to worry about. The lure of guaranteed money could go a long way in convincing him however. A guaranteed pay-off, even if the actual heist goes south."

Coil fixed her with a cold look, "Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Why would you think I would pay your team for failure?"

She smiled, even as she went cold inside. She wore the arrogance as a mask, gave no sign that she was onto his methods and his true persona. "Because you're after something else. Don't deny it. You're playing a different game, and this job of yours plays a part in it, but it's not an end in itself. You don't care whether we succeed or fail, only that we put on a show."

A silence stretched between them and, when he next spoke, Coil sounded approving. "You always were insightful. A minimum reward for pursuing the job. I do wonder what you would consider fair?"

"Five thousand a piece," Lisa insisted.

Coil nodded, "Five thousand it is. Guaranteed minimum of twenty thousand for your team. And I'll even match whatever funds you manage to make off with."

Lisa looked at him, something calculating in her gaze. "That's quite the offer. What about the Travelers? How will they play into this little scheme?"

He leaned back into his chair, "Consider them back up. If the Protectorate or the Wards make a swift response and converge upon you, they'll even the odds a bit. You've met them, you should know that they're quite capable."

"But you don't see that happening?" Lisa asked, leaning over the desk. "You're expecting something else."

Coil watched her for a long while, "The ABB and the Empire 88 have been fighting their cold war for years now, but as we both know, sometimes that stalemate turns hot. I've received intelligence that those tensions have been building up for quite some time now, and I have agents positioned in both gangs."

"This is insane," Lisa interrupted him. "You're talking about setting off a gang war."

"It's a necessary play. And besides, you can't deny it would make an effective distraction. If all goes as expected, things will get messy in the Docks, and even the Protectorate will be forced to respond. They're so focused on that image of theirs, as you know."

Lisa frowned, "What about Taylor? The people who live there?"

"I've taken precautions so that your friend won't be caught in the middle. That Food Kitchen you two are so enamored with will be far removed from the battleground, as will her home and neighborhood. As for anyone caught in the crossfire, tell me, Lisa, when did you ever start caring about the little people?"

Lisa glared at him, "Fuck you, Coil. I'm not quite that heartless."

"No, I suppose you're not," her boss said. "Still, if it will put your mind at ease, I would ask you to remember that these things do happen from time to time. Cold wars turn into momentary bursts of violence, and this one has been due for some time now. Whether I set it off or not, the ABB and the Empire 88 are scheduled for another outburst, a purging of all their built up antipathies and blood lust. If it doesn't happen on my schedule, it will happen on theirs."

He smiled beneath his mask, "But that's not something you need to worry about Lisa. Tell me, do you think you can get your team on board with this plan of ours? Or will you choose defiance?"

Lisa met his masked gaze, and her mind flashed back to those conversations which had never been, and their first encounter over a cell phone, with a gun held to her head. She deflated. Not now, she'd have to choose her battles. Because if she didn't, if he decided to cut his losses and just eliminate her, and Taylor found out… she got a momentary glimpse of a world in turmoil, the skies coming apart as vast and terrible and vague horrors spilled out upon the planet below, an orgy of destruction and chaos far beyond the capacity of any Parahuman to unleash.

"I'll do it," Lisa said. "Give me a time, and I'll make the preparations. Get my team on board."

"Good," Coil said. "I do appreciate it when things run smoothly. Thank you, Tattletale, for your cooperation."

The armed guards escorted her out and Coil leaned back in his chair. Soon, he'd have the pre-cog, and he could start acting proactively. Until then, he could only wait.


End file.
